


A Penny Saved

by vulcan_slash_robot



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 2012 tower fic, But they'll be fine, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Clint Barton is also a human disaster but we love him, Coming Out, Dog - Freeform, Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Internalized Homophobia, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, brief description of panic attack, get-together, humor? maybe, i don't know how to tag for tone, mention of off-screen pre-story civilian casualties, sudden semi-accidental dog adoption, the dog will remain safe I am not a monster, with some Sad Boys in the middle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot
Summary: A moment earlier, Tony would’ve said things were going really well, with Steve.Except then Steve threw himself into traffic in mid-conversation.





	1. Find a Penny, pick it up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sofreakinmanyfandoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofreakinmanyfandoms/gifts).



> This is my auction fill for Marvel Trumps Hate 2018! Huge thanks to [sofreakinmanyfandoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofreakinmanyfandoms) for bidding on me and to all the mods for putting the event together. Shoutout to [FestiveFerret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret) for telling me lots of stories about dogs and helping me generate Poorly Handled Social Situations to cause these boys trouble, and to my trusty beta-reader [Wynnesome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnesome/pseuds/wynnesome) for making sure I didn't done hecked the words bad.

A moment earlier, Tony would’ve said things were going really well, with Steve.

It’d been a few weeks since hellfire and space whales had rained out of the sky over Manhattan, and he and Cap had said plenty of sheepish and sincere things to cancel out the rash and heated things they’d said on day one, and then some silly and snarky things, a few thoughtful things--one or two distressingly honest things, in Tony’s opinion--and all these things had come with a side order of street food and/or streaming TV and Tony couldn’t be sure exactly where this all was going but it had seemed to be going well.

Except then Steve threw himself into traffic in mid-conversation.

They were on their way back from one of Tony’s favorite delis, just a few blocks from the tower. Tony was laughing, hard enough to bust a gut, because good god, who decided to allow Steve Goddam Rogers to just say things like _that_. He reached out, playfully, to punch Cap in the arm and offer a rejoinder.

The punch whiffed. Tony opened his eyes and blinked at the empty sidewalk where his wisecracking supersoldier had been half an instant ago. Screeching tires drew his eyes to the street beyond, just in time to see the familiar shape of his missing person rolling up out of a crouch--out from in front of one car and directly into the path of another. Before Tony could even shout a warning, Steve had leapt up and _toward_ the oncoming vehicle, planting one foot in the center of the hood and vaulting over it in a few strides. Once clear, Steve dodged out of the road onto the far sidewalk.

Tony stood frozen, half-reaching for the chaos that had already resolved. After a second, he slowly lowered his arms, breathing through the adrenaline spike and willing his racing heart to settle down. Calmly, like an important adult person who’s seen much scarier things than somebody’s last-model sedan, he made his way to a crosswalk, waited for the light the way sane people do, and crossed over to Steve’s apparent new favorite side of the street.

The car Steve had parkour’d over had pulled up along the sidewalk--double parked, but who’s counting--and Steve had spent all of the time it took Tony to catch up with him leaning into the passenger window, talking intently with the driver. No doubt making sure everyone was all right, probably giving them his insurance information for good measure, just in case that footprint in the hood didn’t pop out neatly with a light tap. Tony couldn’t hear any angry voices, as he got closer, but there was something oddly tense about Steve’s posture.

“What’s with the stunt show, Cap?” Tony asked lightly once he was close enough. He stuck his hands in his pockets, keeping his posture casual. No good ever came from acting worried and confused in front of civilians. “Conversation suddenly so boring you decided you’d rather play matador to the nearest Nissan?”

Then Steve turned to face him, and much became clear.

“Puppy??” Tony breathed, aware that his face was doing unacceptable things, (big-eyed, enamored, devastated things) but unable to currently care.

Steve was holding a puppy. Steve had a _puppy_ where did he get a _puppy_ , where did Steve get the saddest, floppiest pupper ever, oh _no_ , was puppy in the _road--_

“Oh gosh, Tony, I’m sorry, that must’ve been, uh, I just,” Steve stammered, at a loss to explain himself. He looked down at the dog and made a few unacceptable faces of his own. His internal monologue was clearly also running something along the lines of _puppy puppy puppy puppy,_ although he was holding it together a bit better on the outside than Tony, because Captain America was good like that. “It...he was in the middle of the street and he was limping and there was a car and they didn’t see him? I didn’t even think, I just. I had to.”

“Oh noooooooooo…” The words came out half-formed, like a vaguely-enunciated exhale more than a sentence. Tony caught himself reaching for the dog and jerked his hands back guiltily. What was he going to do, pet it better? Only now he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

Phone! Phone is a reasonable thing to do with hands. Yes. Phone. Tony fished the device in question out of his pocket. Dog is hurt, ask Jarvis for directions to a vet. This is what a normal person would do, for sure.

 

****

 

Sometimes, since Rebirth, Steve’s reflexes got out ahead of conscious thought. Sometimes, he didn’t actually know why he was doing a thing or what he was doing at all until he’d done it. Then he’d look down to find out he’d just drop-kicked a grenade away from a family of civilians or crushed a robot that had been inches from decapitating one of his team. So. He’d been almost as surprised as Tony to find himself ten yards away from his previous position and in possession of a frightened, helpless animal.

Steve sat hunched in the cold, wobbly chair in the corner of the examination room at the vet’s office Tony had hustled them off to, with his chin in his hands, elbows on his knees, and eyes on the little shape shivering on the table. The dog stared back at him, big brown eyes liquid and hopeless. The little thing was more or less spaniel-shaped; its brown and white fur was matted and dirty, its snout pointed, its ears broad and flopped-over, and its body no bigger in total than your average sleeping pillow.

The dog hadn’t panicked or struggled at any point so far, merely going limp whenever anyone touched it. It seemed to trust humans; it must have been well-kept at some point in the past. In fact, the girl who’d checked it over when they’d first arrived (using a wand-like device that was probably terribly archaic, judging by the face Tony had made at it) had found an implanted microchip with a serial number. Someone had owned and cared about this dog, once. She’d gone out to the front of the office to run the number for contact information, and after a few moments Tony had followed.

Tony had seemed a little uncomfortable during all this, a little on edge, so Steve had let him go without comment. He wasn’t quite sure how Tony felt about dogs, in general. Steve loved them. Steve loved them with an implicit ferocity that snuck up and surprised him on the very rare occasions when he’d had  the chance to be around one, and after the initial shock of finding this one in his arms he’d thought, _well, that sounds like something I would do_. Whereas Tony, for his part, had so far reacted only with a series of distressed faces and strangled noises that were beyond Steve’s ability to read. He seemed to care what happened to the dog, at least, but it had also looked like he was afraid to come near it.

Steve drew another long, steadying breath, remaining resolutely seated out of reach of the creature, very carefully not offering it the comfort it seemed to long for. He’d get attached, and it had a chip. This dog had a family, somewhere. Its hurts weren’t his to tend to.

The air was laced with scents of antiseptic and damp fur, of animals in varying states of distress. This particular dog, after a fairly cursory checkup, had been diagnosed with nothing worse than a lacerated paw (bandaged now) and moderate malnutrition. Time and proper diet would take care of that, assuming someone was willing to provide them. But, that examination had come and gone and so had the workers who’d administered it, and Tony still wasn’t back with any news about the chip.

Finally, eventually, after what was surely much longer than your average interval for a “we found your dog” phone call, Tony returned. Steve looked up at him, expectant, ready to be relieved of this limbo.

“Well,” Tony began, leaning back on the doorframe and running a hand through his hair, “Her name is Penny.”

Steve nodded, not mentioning that he’d been carefully avoiding thinking of her--it--using pronouns that implied personhood. Agency. Personality. It. It’s an it. If it’s a _she_ then _she_ needs love and Steve’s not going to be able to let go.

Tony sighed. “So there’s good...well, no. There’s news.” Tony corrected himself, a little bit nonsensically, but they’d known each other a few weeks and Steve was starting to get a sense for how Tony talked. “It’s mostly bad, really, pretty bad, but, um. There’s been sort of a rush on shelters and things, since the invasion. Like, they’re running out of space, that kind of rush. Because there’s so many lost pets, obviously…” Tony trailed off and waved a hand through the air, vaguely miming an explosion. “Big holes in buildings. Lots of pets got lost. Lots of people looking for them. But, uh.

“We called the listed number for this kid here, and got no answer, and the normal advice of the nice people at the desk is to keep trying for a few days, but I’m me and I have JARVIS and,” Tony stared at the dog, not Steve, making another face that Steve couldn’t decipher. He was either angry or upset. Maybe both. “I can run backwards from a phone number in ways that other people can’t. I can take that and dig down and get to street addresses and compare them to maps of the destruction, get names and Facebook profiles and memorial posts--”

He cut himself off. He sounded a little choked up. Steve waited.

“They’re gone.” Tony clarified, and now that Steve knew what he’d been trying to say, he was impressed at how steady Tony’s voice stayed. “Their apartment...it’s a miracle the dog lived. Nobody else did.”

“Oh,” Steve finally answered, very faintly. Discussing the ones they’d failed to save was never easy on any of them. “Is there...any other family that might want…?”

“Penny?” Tony filled in. His eyes flicked to Steve’s for a fraction of a second, then to the floor, like he couldn’t bear to look even at the dog now. “No. I dug up some comment threads across Facebook, speculating about her. The consensus seems to be that they’re pretty sure she’s gone too, and it’s sad but it’s for the best because nobody else can take in a dog right now, for various reasons.”

Steve was too overwhelmed to say anything. Grief for people he never knew coursed through him, hot and cold, clenching in his chest. He had to tamp it down, crush it back. They were gone, and that was a little bit on him, but a lot more people would have gone with them if he and his team hadn’t been there. Right now it didn’t do any good to dwell on it. He could ask for a link to the memorial posts later (he’d probably already read them, if they were publicly available) but in this moment, there was something that needed to be done, a life whose next chapter lay in their hands.

Tony looked over at him, something grim and final in his gaze. Steve tried to gather himself to face that down, to present an argument for why it mattered that they take the time to ensure the future safety of this animal rather than just walk away without looking back. But, just then, the door opened, and the same young vet who’d checked the dog for her-- _its_ \--chip entered to ask them what they’d like to do.

“What do we need, a leash?” Tony snapped off, a cheery press smile on his face. “Collar? Kibble, definitely, dog’s gotta eat. Oh, a bowl! Carrier. Does a dog that size need a carrier? What else?”

Steve blinked at him, momentarily struck dumb, unable to even hear the vet’s answering opinions. “Tony?” he broke in after a few seconds.

Tony immediately held up a finger to ask the vet to wait, and turned to focus on Steve. “Yep?”

Steve faltered, fixed in place by Tony’s attentive, expectant gaze. “You...you want her?”

“ _You_ want her,” Tony corrected, gently, but brooking no argument. “Have you seen your own face at any point in the last hour? That’s your dog, Cap, I’m not separating a national icon from his dog, I’m pretty sure that’s literally treason.” One corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile. “Not that that would always stop me, but I’ve got to do my civic duty occasionally or they’ll catch on. C’mon, soldier. Grab your dog and let’s get out of here.”


	2. The Penny drops

“What’s the emergency?”

Steve huffed out a breath, catching a backdraft of carpet-scented air, and shifted to work his forearms under his chin. He did not, despite the aggrieved voice of Sarah Rogers in the back of his mind, stand to greet his visitor.

“Hi, Clint,” he sighed, remaining sprawled out flat on the living room floor, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do, and you’d said...”

The day they’d brought Penny home, reactions had been mixed. There had been a common theme of surprise, some enthusiasm, some caution. Bruce had seemed lukewarm but in favor, Thor had been as enthused as ever but quickly reigned himself in when cautioned to be gentle. Steve wasn’t too good at reading Natasha, yet, but she’d given Penny a considering once-over and then turned a pointed look toward Clint, who appeared to have gone all melted inside and promptly “volunteered as tribute” for any and all dog questions and situations. Tony had vanished the moment Steve’s back was turned.

“I did say, and I meant it,” Clint assured him lightly. A sudden rush of air was all the warning Steve got before Clint had flopped out on the floor next to him with surprisingly little impact. Clint mimicked his pose, chin on arms, and half-turned his face to Steve. “You called, I’m here, what’s the deal?”

Steve blinked the stunned look off his own face and turned back to the space under the sideboard. “She won’t come out.”

Clint, looking faintly amused out the corner of Steve’s eye, copied along, turning his own attention to the furry sphere tucked back into the deepest shadows. “She appears to be sleeping.”

“She has been, for two days,” Steve tried to keep his voice even and low; neither Clint nor Penny had done anything worth getting yelled at for, and he needed to remember that. “She comes out to eat and poop and then goes right back.”

“She’s tired.”

“I’m so glad I called you.”

Clint laughed, a sudden short bark that startled Penny out of her seemingly permanent stupor just long enough to wuff sleepily at them before snuggling back down.

“Naw, Cap, I promise, this is normal. She’s been living in the gutter. She’s seen some shit. She just needs to reset, and for now that takes a nice safe bolt hole and all of the naps ever. In a couple more days she’ll be rested up and following you around like a baby duck.”

Steve remained skeptical of Clint’s assessment, but allowed himself to be drawn out of his worry about the dog for a movie, a beer, and a chat while she continued to snooze. It felt good to have a friend around, and he was struck with a pang of guilt at having not spent any time with the team since Penny had arrived. In fact, he really hadn’t spent anything like an appropriate, proportionate amount of time with most of his new teammates even before that. It had just seemed to happen that he’d spent most of his time with Tony, which had been great, but it was definitely past time to reach out to the others as well.

Forcing opportunities for personal bonding into existence had never been his forté (see: One Friend Until Age 23) but God and Penny had handed him a bridge to Clint, and he intended to cross it. Clint himself was probably the bridge to Natasha, anyway, and that was halfway to everybody.

So, when he realized that Penny was days overdue for anti-flea and anti-worm bathing and medication, Clint got to show him how to keep her still without hurting her, got as splattered with extra worming cream as Steve did when she shook a mouthful of it all over the room, and got to share Steve’s phantom itches for the rest of the day after they’d watched untold millions of fleas trying to escape the bath.

By the end of the week, Clint’s prediction had come true, and Steve couldn’t turn around without almost tripping over his furry new shadow. Once, he very nearly stepped on her as he left the bathroom after a shower. She’d been curled up outside the door, nose pressed to the gap along the floor; he saw her just in time, but over-corrected and went ass-over-teakettle onto the bedroom carpet. He managed not to break anything or land on her, barely, and soon enough the panic of the moment was replaced by amusement, and of course his first thought was to text Clint with the story. Clint sent back a string of laughing emojis and suggested that she might be ready to go to the park.

Within about an hour they were over the bridge and standing in a small, dog-friendly park in Bed-Stuy that Clint had described as “his favorite.” Steve bent to unclip Penny’s leash once they were inside the fence, and when he stood back up, Clint was grinning at him.

“What?”

“I got you something,” Clint half-explained, then shrugged. “Well, actually I got Penny something, but you’re the one with thumbs, so you get to keep track of it.” He flipped open the flap of the messenger bag he was carrying and dug out a...thing, and handed it to Steve.

Steve took it, dumbly, and stared down, utterly blank.

It was his shield.

Except for how it clearly, patently, and expressly wasn’t. It was only about ten inches wide, for starters, and made of some kind of lightweight plastic, thicker at the edges. The plastic itself was red, with the white stripe, the blue center and the star painted on top.

“Is this...a toy?” Steve guessed. Penny was whining softly, dancing impatiently at his feet, trying to sit still and show she was being good but not managing very well, with her eyes glued on the mini-shield. She seemed to know what it was for, at least. If only she could’ve told Steve what to do with it, they’d be set. “Do I just give it to her?”

Clint threw his head back and laughed. “Didn’t have those in your day, huh?”

“Could’ve, and I just didn’t see them. What does it do?”

“What does your shield _usually_ do?”

Steve looked up at him from under his brows, a tiny-half smile sneaking onto his face as understanding dawned. In an instant, he pivoted ninety degrees, whipping his right arm out and down the length of the park in a familiar wrist-flicking arc.

The little plastic shield soared off like a bullet, traveling well over a full city block before becoming lost in the trees at the far end of the park. Penny bolted after it, her silhouette dwindling into the distance but still near enough to clearly read the confusion in the way she paused when the toy never came back down.

Clint was in _stitches_ , collapsing toward Steve and bouncing off his arm before reeling back the other way, tipping onto the ground. He was laughing so hard he was barely making actual noise, unable to draw enough breath to produce sound.

“Well,” Steve said, hands planted on his hips. He paused a half second for Clint to collect himself slightly. “That was a little more aerodynamic than I thought it would be.”

Clint let out a fresh wheeze of delight, which Steve tried to ignore (along with the tell-tale feeling of his ears and neck heating up) in favor of whistling for Penny to come back.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve sighed, reaching down to meet her as she returned. She looked up at him, big eyes full of disappointment and betrayal, but tail half-wagging with hope. Hot shame dribbled down his spine, and he rubbed Penny’s ears in apology. “That was a gift, and it was very kind of you--Penny clearly loved it--and I ruined it. I really did think the wind would slow it down more, it was so light--”

“No no no, Steve, bro,” Clint waved him off, still on the ground and gasping for breath. “Those things are like fifty cents apiece and dogs routinely rip them apart after a few throws, I brought like, twenty. Here.” He dug into his bag again, this time giving Steve a chance to glimpse the edges of many more red plastic discs, and passed a second, identical toy shield to Steve. Penny brightened immediately. “Just go a little easier and she’ll bring it right back to you.”

Steve twirled this one in his fingers for a moment, getting a better feel for its heft. He smiled down at Penny, whose enthusiasm was through the roof again, previous transgressions forgotten.

“Ready?” he asked her, and she wuffed back at him, lurching into an expectant, perfectly-still waiting stance, gaze fixed on the new disc as if to say _you won’t get away from me this time!_

Carefully now, at what he would consider to be about 5% power, Steve repeated his throw and managed to launch the toy in a smooth arc only about ten yards down the open field. Penny dashed after it again, this time able to keep pace. As the disc started to lose altitude, but before it could get lower than about five feet off the ground, she bunched every muscle in her little body and _sprang_. Steve blinked his surprise, watching her snap the thing right out of the air.

“Yea- _heah!_ Atta girl!” Clint crowed. Penny was galloping off in circles, proud of her prize. Clint whistled and held out his hands to encourage her to circle back their way. “Knew you’d be a frisbee fiend, hell yeah. Get that over here, you good girl.”

He managed to get her to surrender the toy with only a few gentle tugs, and then they were off.

The three of them settled into an easy exploration of the park, Steve and Clint wandering the paths to Clint’s preferred shady corners and slinging the frisbee out for Penny every time she brought it back. The fresh air eased an ache in Steve’s lungs that he hadn’t realized he was carrying, just as watching Penny’s carefree excitement helped to chase the cobwebs from his mind. Having Clint there to chat with made the unfamiliar public space friendly and accessible in a way that such places usually weren’t, so far--except the few favorite haunts Tony had taken him to, before Penny.

Relaxed as he was, Steve found himself people-watching more than he would usually dare. And why shouldn’t he? There was a lot to learn about the average Joe here and now, and it helped him to observe how ordinary people behaved in public. Secondhand information from his team only went so far, and might not always be universal. Like, for example, when Tony had mentioned that men didn’t tend to engage in as much casual touching with their male friends as they had in Steve’s day, yet here in the park today, Steve had seen no fewer than four different small groups of young people in which two or more men had been sitting or standing close enough to touch.

To be fair, they had mostly looked a lot younger than Tony, so maybe it was a generational thing.

Eventually, Penny’s returning gallop after each catch slowed first to a trot, then to a walk, until finally she watched Steve fling a disc out over the grass with only a morose sort of longing, and lay down at his feet instead of chasing it. Clint checked his phone and found that they’d been out for nearly three hours, so Steve scooped his exhausted pup into his arms, clipped on her leash in case she got bored of being carried before they reached the car, rescued the errant frisbee and began the trek home.

On the way back to where they’d parked, Steve’s eye was caught by all the colorful decorations in the neighborhood. He’d seen them on the way in, but had been a little too up in his own head with nerves about Penny’s first outing to really take note.

“Cheerful area, isn’t it?” he remarked with a smile, nodding at one of the many rainbow-striped flags dangling from an upper-floor apartment window.

Clint gave a low, fond chuckle. The curb of the sidewalk they were strolling down was also done in rainbow blocks of color, and a ground-floor unit to their left had curtains in the front window striped with crisp bars of pink and red. “Yeah, this is a _very_ gay neighborhood,” he agreed with a smile.

“Oh,” Steve turned, smiling himself, pleasantly surprised. “I thought that word must be out of fashion, that’s the first time I’ve heard it here.”

Clint stopped dead in his tracks. “Uh.”

Steve slowed to a halt, having passed him by a few steps. “Clint?”

The archer’s face was very nearly an emotionless mask, but he wasn’t quite as good at that trick as Natasha, and Steve could still read the shocked panic beneath it.

“Hey, did I say something wrong?” Steve prompted, gently.

Clint eyed him up, apparently debating the merits of running for his life, but instead eventually said, “...are you talking about the word ‘gay’?”

“Yes?”

“Ohmygodfuckmylife,” Clint mumbled, closing his eyes almost as if the profanity had been a real prayer. He cleared his throat. “That word doesn’t mean what it used to mean.”

Steve looked up and down the street at all the bright, colorful decorations. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Clint drew in a deep, fortifying breath. He started to speak a couple times before he apparently decided to rip off the band-aid and just blurted out: “It means homosexual now.”

It was Steve’s turn to stand very very still and hope his face was blank, though he was sure he looked like a deer in the headlights. “So...when you say this is a _gay_ neighborhood,” he ventured, cautiously.

“It means most of the dudes who live here are into dudes, and the girls like the girls. More or less,” Clint’s posture was still guarded, ready to bolt, apparently not at all reassured by Steve’s reaction.

“How do you know?” Steve’s voice climbed in pitch, very much against his will.

“Well for one thing, I used to live here. Also, they’re being pretty obvious about it,” he gestured around at the decorations. “The, uh, rainbow flag, and the other ones,” he pointed specifically at the pink-and-red curtains. “It’s a pride thing.”

Pride?? _Flags?!_ Steve’s eyes swiveled again to all the attention-grabbing splashes of color. “That’s...not a secret, is it,” he managed, still somehow getting enough air through the iron bands around his lungs to form words. “People know what the flags are.”

Clint nodded, cringing.

“And they just _put them out?!_ ” Steve hissed, horrified, “Where everyone can _see?_ ”

“Hey, whoa, Cap, it’s not like that anymore,” Clint took a step back, palms out placatingly, the fear on his face showing through more and more by the second. “It hasn’t been illegal since--shit, I’m not a history guy, a long time? You can’t go to prison for it anymore. In New York, even, two dudes can get married! In a church! Well, that depends on the church I guess but legally! Signed and filed and government recognized! So, yeah, okay? Whatever you’re thinking, the kids around here are nice people and there’s nothing wrong with them and they’re allowed to live, now, it’s okay for everybody to know, it’s fine, it’s good, it’s a good change, you’re gonna need to get used to it.”

It dawned on Steve very suddenly that the thing Clint was so afraid of was the possibility that Steve would think this was _bad news_. Steve hauled in a ragged, relieved breath.  A couple of hot, silent tears spilled down his face with absolutely no warning and the breath came back out as giddy, almost hysterical laughter. He stumbled sideways until he collided with a brick wall. Penny, still cradled to his chest, licked his cheek and thumped her tail against his side.

Clint stared for a second, apparently thrown by this turn of events. The lightbulb going off over his head, when it came, was almost visible.

“OH, oh my god, this is the _other_ kind of surprise for you, isn’t it,” Clint clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Thank you Jesus, I was not prepared to get decked in the face today.”

Steve, his legs having turned to jelly, found himself squinting back up at Clint from his new sprawling seat on the sidewalk. “Decked?”

“Punched,” Clint clarified, swinging around to sit next to him on the ground.

“Wh…did you think I would hit you?”

“Well I hoped not, you seemed like a good guy so far, but you are from grandpa times,” Clint gave an apologetic shrug. “That doesn’t always go so good.”

“Ninety-year-olds typically get so mad about, uh, people being open, that they just sock their nearest friend?”

“You know I did just tell you that I used to _live_ on the gayest street in Bed-Stuy,” Clint reminded him with a smile.

Steve’s mouth dropped open. Clint was like that? Like _him?_ And he could just...tell people?

His head was a wash of half-memories, of secret meetings and secret clubs, dark alleys and desperate sprints away from sirens, of pretty boys who sprinted down a different alley and never turned up again. Fear and smoldering anger at the one injustice he hadn’t dared to stand up against. The six hundred times he’d tried to work up the courage to tell Bucky, just so he’d have someone to talk to, and the five hundred ninety-nine times he’d decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

Then, here...now. A whole street lined with bright, unmistakable flags. _Pride_ , Clint had said, like this was something people celebrated. Steve’s mind skipped back to the young people in the park and he suddenly recalled how he’d thought it was odd that Tony had specified that men didn’t like to touch their _platonic_ male friends, as if there was another kind. He thought of two young men in particular that he’d seen today. They’d had an old quilt, spread out under a huge oak tree. One had been leaning back against the trunk, the other flat on the ground with his head in the first man’s lap. The way they’d looked at each other made a lot more sense, now.

“So help me, Clint,” Steve rasped out, wrung dry by the roller coaster of the last few minutes, “If any part of this was a joke, this is your last chance to tell me.”

“Not on your life, Cap,” Clint swore. “I mean, it’s still a complex topic and you should probably read up and get some information from a source that’s not me, but speaking as a 21st century gay? It’s doable. I have a very nice partner, I love him very much, and I feel safe saying that in front of my friends. Around here that goes for most of the strangers, too.”

Steve swallowed heavily, scrubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes to keep them from misting up again. “That sounds wonderful.”

 

****

Tony tilted forward on his elbows, nearly dunking his nose in the fresh mug of coffee he held in both hands. Rich, caffeinated steam washed over his face. He could feel his brain starting to boot up, just from breathing it in. He imagined himself with a loading bar over his head, filled in to about one percent, and giggled softly into the cup.

Whatever. The team knew by now that if they were going to hold Family Breakfast before nine a.m. then they were going to get Critically Low Battery Tony, and it hadn’t stopped them so far. He was fine with only being able to converse in vaguely-disgruntled mumbling, as long as nobody was expecting sparkling wit.

Though Tony still hadn’t quite figured out why the hell everyone was so attached to team _breakfast_ and not team _brunch_ or team _midnight pizza_. Probably Steve’s fault. Between the momentum of starting his days at hell-o’clock in the morning and the magnetic force generated by sky-scraping towers of bacon pancakes, he’d quickly drawn the rest of them into a routine.

Tony smiled a little, brain functioning just enough to remind him to cover it behind a sip of coffee. That way any besotted sighs he let slip would be blamed on the beverage. His gaze drifted over to Steve, though, watching the play of his muscles under that damn tight t-shirt in a way that was probably terrible for Tony’s cover. Steve was still busy at the stove, turning pancakes and bacon and potatoes and sausage and eggs on the industrial-sized range with precision timing born of months of practice. People tended to start helping, once they’d had half a cup of coffee, but you had to be willing to take orders if you stepped into the Captain’s kitchen, so that ruled Tony out. Clint was already in there, actually, shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve and doing most of the potato upkeep (Steve kept checking them anyway, which led to a lot of low-grade bickering) and Tony gradually realized that Natasha had appeared as well, sometime when he wasn’t looking, and had taken over most of the meat detail. Steve didn’t seem quite as willing to bicker with her.

The Wonder Twins weren’t what Tony was interested in, anyway, so he didn’t pay them much mind. He narrowed his mental depth of field, let them blur into the background, and watched Steve.

The dog had...thrown Tony off his game a little. He wouldn’t call the dog thing a mistake, or even really a problem, but her presence had made him step back, and from that distance he’d seen more clearly.

His plan had been to clear out for a bit, give Steve a little space to get to know his new fur-child. Tony knew himself, and he knew he tended to hoard nice things, whether he’d meant to or not. All he’d want to do if he got near that dog was hug it until it loved him best, so he judged it better to stay back until she knew that _Steve_ was her real dad. But then avoiding Steve had left a huge hole in his social calendar, and the first thing he’d realized, with quite a bit of chagrin, was that he’d been hoarding Steve in exactly the same way he feared he’d steal the dog.

The loose tabs Tony had JARVIS keep on all the tower’s residents quickly showed that Steve had started spending more time with Clint, after Penny happened, which was a relief. Tony’d worried that his early monopolizing of Steve’s time would have made it harder for him to reach out to the others, but he seemed to be getting along all right. So, taking his cue from Steve, Tony had looked for other teammates to drag around town during down time.

He’d gone to the latest Batman film with Bruce, and argued with him for days about whether the character of Bruce Wayne was based on Tony--sure, Batman comics had been in print since before Tony had been born, but Tony would like to submit to the court that Christian Bale’s version felt a lot closer to home than previous incarnations of the Dark Knight. Bruce was unimpressed. Or possibly just liked goading Tony.

With Thor, Tony hadn’t quite known where to start, but they’d somehow found their way to an arcade, a go-kart track, and eventually, an ice-cream parlor that served old-fashioned hard ice cream in scoops the size of volleyballs. One of the more harrowing days Tony’d lived through without the suit in recent years, but worth it.

Natasha, when asked if she’d like to do something sometime, brought him along to what was apparently a standing weekly girls’ night with Pepper at a club that played a lot of electro-swing and served Very Pink Drinks. The idea had terrified him in concept, but the night itself had been so relaxing he’d readily agreed to come along as often as possible for future Fridays.

Getting up to such hijinks with the rest of his team had been great in its own right, but more importantly, had led to his second realization: spending time with Steve had been _different_.

Tony sighed into his coffee again, militantly keeping his eyes above the level of the apron string where it crossed Steve’s lower back. Openly ogling the man’s ass would be too much for even Bruce to miss.

He hadn’t _meant_ to get all heart-eyes over Steve, obviously. If this had been _planned_ he would’ve picked someone with some chance of returning his affections. Steve. Sweet, gorgeous, careful, soft-hearted hard-headed Steve, with his dog and his biceps and his eyes and his pancakes, was without a doubt the straightest person Tony had ever met. Tony was making his peace with that, gradually. It would take time to teach his heart (and his dick) to let go of the idea, but there was nothing to be done. You couldn’t just make people change, and he’d never want to change a single thing about Steve anyway, even if that meant Steve would never want him.

For now, he could bask in the pining, just a little, and enjoy the view, just a little.

Tony’s coffee was snagged out of his slack grip. He whined sadly as Natasha stole away toward the table with it, wafting the mug at him as she went. Not the first time someone had used this tactic to move him from the kitchen bar to the dining table when breakfast was ready. He followed, not proud that such methods worked on him, but glad the team seemed willing to work with his sleepy-brain rather than leave him blinking at the wall until he got hungry enough to notice that they’d all finished and left hours ago.

Tony slumped into the dining chair that Nat had left his coffee nearest to, and obediently tucked into the plate of breakfast that landed in front of him. Everything was excellent, as always, and there was far too much of it, as always, but they’d put him next to Thor this morning, which made it particularly easy to dispose of extra. With a little help, Tony managed to clean his plate by the time everyone else started to look done and ready to move on with the day. He still wouldn’t consider himself fully booted, but he’d probably crossed 50%. That was better than he used to ask of himself before operating power tools, so lab time was on the immediate horizon.

Before anyone could pull away from the table, though, Steve cleared his throat to get their attention.

“While you’re all here,” Steve began, looking around the table.

Everyone waited politely for him to go on, but he appeared to be struggling to find the words. Tony’s brow furrowed, watching Steve slowly turn pink.

“Clint says…” Steve tried again, but hesitated once more, and looked down at the table.

He’d gone all the way through bashful and into terrified, judging by the hunch of his posture and the quaver in his voice. Tony wanted to tell him it’d be okay, whatever it was, but Clint was there first. He reached out and gave Steve’s arm a reassuring squeeze. Steve met Clint’s eyes, and Clint nodded, encouraging, whispering something that looked like _you can do this_ , from where Tony sat. Steve stared at the archer for a moment, then gave a short, sharp nod of his own, drew a deep breath through his nose, and turned to the team again.

“I...um....I’m told this is called...coming out?”

The table _exploded_ \--Bruce and Natasha leaping in with immediate support and encouragement, Thor sidling into the conversation in his most polite What Is This Midgardian Custom routine and quickly becoming the loudest in his approval once he understood.

Tony sat very still, hoping he could blame his shell-shock on his usual morning non-functionality. Really, he was having two more important realizations in quick succession.

The first was _holy shit, Steve’s gay!_

Which would’ve been fantastic news and required a complete overhaul of his “quietly pining until it goes away” plan. Except for the proud, fond way Clint was smiling at Steve, the shy, grateful way Steve was looking back at Clint, the comforting hand Clint was running up and down Steve’s back, and the week and a half that Steve had spent almost exclusively in Clint’s company right before this announcement, which led to the second realization:

 _Holy shit,_ **_I’ve missed my shot._ **


	3. A Penny for your thoughts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the new tags; I don't feel this is a particularly severe example of either of these things but I'd rather over-warn.

Tony was living in Hell.

He was trying very, very hard not to show it, and the universe was making it very, very hard to accomplish that.

When Steve had come out to the team over breakfast, Tony had eventually managed to paste on a smile and cough up a “good for you.” Perhaps not the most enthusiastic reaction at the table, but positive.

A few days later when he’d walked in on the happy couple sitting hip-to-hip on the common room couch and jointly snuggling the dog, he hadn’t even bolted. Tony had found it in himself to greet them pleasantly, get what he’d wanted out of the fridge, politely decline whatever they’d been trying to ask him, and only then made a dignified retreat.

He’d done a pretty good job of avoiding being alone with Steve, over the course of almost an entire week, which was some truly record-breaking self denial on his part. Granted, the previous week or so, since Penny, had also been pretty light on the Steve-contact, but Steve hadn’t made him _work_ for that one.

Steve had been perfectly happy to keep his dog to himself. Steve was proving much less happy to keep his gay to himself.

Every time Steve got him cornered--and it did happen, because Steve was Steve and Tony wanted to say yes to him even when looking into Steve’s Big Sad Eyes made him feel like he’d been gutted--Steve wanted to talk about Gay Stuff. He would lead into it, a bit, chat about something normal for a few minutes to get Tony’s guard down, and then suddenly he’d be asking if he should get Penny a rainbow bandana, or if he should come out publicly now or wait, or what do you think of this, or is this the done thing, hey Tony, Clint says--

Tony could handle a lot with a press-room smile and a couple of glib one-liners, but this was too much. These nice, safe conversations, these good times with Steve that he’d missed so much but which inevitably turned sideways and shoved his face directly into what he’d lost by not having the courage to reach for it when it was there; it felt like having the arc reactor kicked out through the back of his ribcage. Sudden. Shocking. Unbearable.

He gave bad answers, made flimsy excuses, and got the hell out of the room. He strongly considered revoking some of Steve’s door codes, after the second time, but settled for having JARVIS withhold information about his location instead.

Eventually Friday night arrived and Tony fled, grateful, into the feminine embrace of his scheduled outing with Pepper and Natasha. Man-based drama should not be able to follow him there, he thought, like someone who had never been invited on a girls’ night before.

It took Pepper precisely three minutes to ask him who he was pining over now, and it took the both of them about four and a half pomegranate martinis to get him to say it was Steve. Pepper had looked shocked and Natasha delighted, until he’d finished the sentence with “--but it’s too late, he’s already with Clint which is so UNFAIR nobody told me he was GAY I want a rematch,” at which point Natasha had burst into the loudest ugly-laughing Tony had ever heard in his life. She’d still been going, five minutes later, when Tony had pretended to head for the restrooms and instead walked all ten blocks home in the rain.

The next morning he found a box of chocolate bars on the penthouse coffee table with a note reading “Back in 3 days, feel better --Nat.” Which would have been a lot kinder if the candy hadn’t been wrapped in bright scarlet paper with blue block letters proclaiming the product name “TONY’S CHOCOLONELY” on each bar.

He ate one anyway, just to spite her.

(It was actually pretty good chocolate. Dammit, Natasha.)

Feeling affronted and personally wounded by this grave insult, Tony set off in a post-chocolate huff. Unfortunately, he was too caught up in his own internal monologue of nearly-incoherent grumbling to pay any attention to where his feet were carrying him.

So when Barton looked up at him in surprise as he barged into the archer’s private suite unannounced and uninvited, Tony had very little time to come up with an excuse for this behavior.

“Any idea where Romanoff got off to?” Tony’s mouth said while his brain was still stuck on _why did I do this,_ “She left a note but it pretty much just said ‘bye,’ figured you might have the scoop?”

Barton slow-blinked at him, just once, and then replied: “We’re both officially fully off duty this weekend. I think she had a friend out of town she wanted to see.”

Tony nodded slowly, not bothering to process this information he hadn’t actually needed. His eyes flitted around the room, searching for anything to kill time until he could make an even-slightly-graceful exit. He spied a half-packed duffle bag open on the sofa.

“And where are _you_ going?”

“I. Also have a friend out of town I want to see,” Barton lied, like a liar.

Tony rolled his eyes. “You can just _say_ you’re going away for the weekend with your boyfriend and the dog, you know.”

Clint startled, stumbling a half-step backwards. The backs of his calves struck the coffee table and he nearly toppled over it, but he managed to save himself in a fantastically un-majestic windmill maneuver that must’ve had its roots in some kind of high-wire act. “Excuse me??” he sputtered, once he had both feet back on the ground. “...have you been talking to Steve?”

“Nobody had to tell me!” Tony threw his hands up in frustration. “I have eyes! You’re not subtle! Case in point, you’re literally holding a leash in your hand right now, and there’s more dog toys in that bag than there are clothes. Two plus two equals three days of fetch and nudity, Birdbrain.”

“...you’re not wrong, I guess,” Barton allowed after a second, his posture still wary.

Tony suppressed a wince. “Jesus, whatever, I just wanted to yell at Natasha, I’m going back to bed before this day gets any shittier.”

“Why do you want to yell at Natasha?” Clint asked flatly, “That’s usually considered suicide, by everybody who isn’t me.”

Tony opened his mouth, and snapped it closed again. He considered yelling at Clint some more. He considered just saying _she was mean to me_ , but even thinking it made him feel like a five-year-old. He almost considered actually explaining why he was feeling so shitty, but dismissed the thought before it was more than half-formed. “You and I are not currently the kind of friends who have that conversation,” he settled for.

Barton nodded, face clearly closing off at the rebuff. “Right, sorry.”

Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look...it’s complicated. I’m having a lousy week. I’m gonna let you get out of here, just, for the record, it’s. It’s good. I’m glad you have each other. You’re good together. Just take care of him, okay? And the dog. Now get out of my house and go have fun.”

Tony turned on his heel and strode out without waiting for any kind of reply.

 

He did try to go back to bed, but Tony was a restless sleeper at the best of times, and mid-morning naps were pretty much impossible without at least thirty-six waking hours to wear him down first.

Besides which, the guilt was eating him alive.

Now that he’d said it, he knew it was true: it was good that Steve and Clint had found each other. They were clearly happy, all cute and domestic and parenting a dog together after only a couple of weeks. This was a good thing. Steve was happy. Steve was going off to spend a long weekend someplace with his adorable dog and buff boyfriend and Tony should be happy for him.

But Tony still felt so _jilted_ , like he’d been there first, like Clint had taken something precious from him, and that feeling sat sour in his chest because he knew very well that he’d never spoken up. He’d had no claim on Steve, and Steve couldn’t be expected to go around asking all his friends if they had crushes on him before he chose one to date.

Tony threw aside the blankets and stomped off across the penthouse again. Natasha was out of town, and Clint and Steve had gone off somewhere to canoodle and play with the dog, and, come to think of it, Thor had ditched them yesterday to go see Jane. That left Tony and Bruce, and he knew Bruce was in the middle of a round of delicate experiments involving petri dishes and live samples and “Tony, I’m serious, don’t even breathe on that” which he’d already had to start over on once because Tony was a gears-and-wires guy and should have maybe done the reading _before_ trying to get involved with the microbes. So just Tony, then.

The workshop didn’t hold much appeal right now; working while this cranky usually resulted in either a mild-to-moderate injury or an update to the War Machine armor that even Rhodey would think was a bit on the WMD side. So, with the place to himself, Tony took to wandering the common floor, barefoot, in flannel sleep pants and an old undershirt, with a blanket draped around his shoulders like a cloak.

Shuffling down the empty halls with his blanket-cloak sweeping after him made him feel like some ancient king or viking lord, alone in the echoing chambers of his once-great castle, mourning the lost glory of days gone and companions departed. Which, yeah, melancholy as fuck, but it made him think about Thor, which was a nice change of pace, and put him in the mood to read some high fantasy, which was finally something that might distract him from this funk for more than a few seconds.

A little more morose wandering brought him to the common library, a room he’d originally had installed because of the way Pepper used to talk about the library scene in _Beauty and the Beast_. She’d never really ended up living at the tower, of course, but she still loved it. Pep always made a point of spending a bit of her precious free time there, if she’d been working at the tower offices or visiting Tony.

The library was a big room--not as hyperbolically huge as the one in the movie, but bright, open and airy. It extended up into the next storey, taking up a hunk of square footage that rightfully belonged to the penthouse but which Tony had happily sacrificed in order to include a few sweeping, book-lined staircases and sliding ladders for high shelves, because Pepper always mentioned those when she talked about the scene. The room was built into the narrow end of the common floor, where the curtain-wall of windows curved around the west end of the building, providing a 180-degree view from the Empire State building at the far left to the Big Green Square that was Central Park on the right.

Most of the books Tony actually liked to read were stored at ground level, in the free-standing shelves between the entrance and the windows. If it hadn’t been for Pepper, he probably would’ve just kept digital copies on his local servers for easy access from any screen in the tower. But, needing to fill all the shelf space had given him an excuse to get well-worn old copies of Tolkien and Niven and Asimov and Adams and before he knew it he had three whole rows where the only shared category was “the ones Tony likes.”

Tony ambled down the aisle he knew held the most books that suited his once-great-king vibe, trailing his fingers over the spines as he went, scanning the titles without a particular choice in mind, waiting for something to reach out and grab him. He came to the end of the first row without having made a selection, and started to round the end, making a pass by the wall of windows.

Tony was going to be quite embarrassed about what happened next, afterwards.

The panoramic views were one of the tower’s best features, after all. Nearly every room had one. Tony was used to seeing his city laid out at his feet. Every day. From one floor higher, even.

Maybe it was because the penthouse didn’t have west-facing windows, due to the height of the library. Maybe that made the view just different enough to seem new.

Because, for whatever reason, Tony rounded the end of one of his favorite shelves, in his own library, in his own home, and looked out the window at the cloudless sky and the Empire State Building and a hot knife of pure terror jammed itself right through his chest. He looked out over the city and remembered that skyline as it had skimmed past his peripheral vision at ungodly speed, the g-forces dragging him into the front plates of the suit as he’d struggled to force the missile _up, god dammit_ , the jarring clang of his toes skimming the tip of the tower and that split second of absolute certainty that he’d fucked it up and knocked himself off course. _You’ve ruined it, you’re dead, everyone’s dead_.

Tony shuddered so hard he nearly lost his footing, and took two staggering steps back from the windows. Away from the unthinkable what-ifs, from the cracked masonry and armies of cranes that whispered to him of blood and failure.

The panic itself didn’t actually last long, this time.

Later, Tony wouldn’t deem the incident worthy of being called a panic attack. Once he was away from the windows, the worst of it subsided, and he was able to stumble to a sheltered nook near the base of a staircase where the world was nice and small and smelled of paper and didn’t have a view of any buildings that still had space-whale imprints on the roof.

The bigger problem was that that little spike of panic seemed to have pierced right through all the dividing walls between the other emotions that Tony had been trying not to feel for the last week, and all the dams inside him burst at once.

So it wasn’t so much a _panic_ attack as maybe a _misery_ attack, really, or at least that’s what Tony would remember it as.

It wasn’t the usual cold grip of fear in his chest, with fingers of dread clenching around his insides to steal his breath and send his heart into overdrive. That feeling was distant, more like the dread was resting a hand on his shoulder like an overly-familiar party guest who couldn’t take a hint. Like someone who couldn’t be bothered to save him from the swirl of guilt, jealousy, rejection, and loneliness he was drowning in.

Tony pulled his feet in until he could tuck his face behind his knees, wrapped his arms around himself, and cried for all he was worth. He didn’t think, didn’t process, didn’t worry. Just cried. Just let the catharsis carry him, thoughtless, to whatever was next.

When a small, wet, snuffling nose bumped against his cheek, and a little soft tongue licked away a few of his tears, he just pulled Penny into his lap and cried on her.

 

****

 

“Oh, and watch your step around Stark, I’m not sure what crawled up his ass and died but he’s in some kind of _mood_.”

Steve groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Perfect. He hates me anyway, maybe I should just stay in my room while you’re gone.”

“He doesn’t _hate_ you,” Clint knocked his shoulder against Steve’s, then leaned back away into his own corner of the sofa. “That man would do anything for you.”

“No,” Steve said flatly, propping an elbow on his knee and resting his chin in his hand. “Maybe before, but...I don’t think he likes dogs. He stopped coming around to see me after Penny moved in. And.”

Steve had to pause, to try to draw breath past the lump in his throat.

“He hasn’t spoken to me at all since I came out.”

“Aw, Steve, no,” Clint moaned. “That can’t be it. There is no way, I’m telling you.”

“He _runs_ , Clint!” Steve threw his hands up. “I keep trying to bring it up and find out for sure, but I get three words into mentioning my…” Steve faltered, talking about sexuality so frankly still felt improper, “...my preferences, and he bolts. We used to be such good friends. I don’t know what else it could be.”

Clint’s arm appeared around Steve’s shoulders, squeezing in silent solidarity.

“You did say some people still have a problem with it,” Steve went on, quietly. “Maybe he does.”

“I still don’t think that’s it,” Clint murmured back. He sounded subdued, though, like he knew that his reassurances might be wrong. “Hey, you didn’t tell him where I was going this weekend, did you?”

“No? I thought you were trying to keep it quiet, for now.”

“I am, which is why it was weird that he knew,” Clint replied mildly, meeting Steve’s incredulous stare with a pointed look. “Also, it’s part of the reason I don’t think he’s being a homophobe at you. He knew I was on my way to see my partner and he said he was happy for us. Hell if I know how he found out, but he’s Tony Stark, maybe he just knows things. Anyway,” he gave Steve’s shoulder a last squeeze before standing up. “I better get going if I want to be out there by lunch. My guy gets pretty annoyed when people are late.”

“Dating you must be a lot of fun for him, then,” Steve deadpanned back, rising to follow Clint to the door.

“You asshole,” Clint said with a fond grin. He collected his duffle from the floor in the entryway and slung it over his shoulder. “Take care of yourself, I’ll see you Tuesday!”

“Have fun!” Steve called after him. Once the elevator doors closed, he let all the air out of his lungs in one huge sigh and allowed himself to slump back against the kitchen island.

What a goddamn mess.

He’d been so nervous, but so _excited_ to tell the team. To have this thing that Clint had promised, the acceptance and support he was supposed to be allowed in the 21st century. And he’d gotten it, mostly, from Clint and Bruce and Nat and Thor, but Tony…

Tony had looked at him like he’d just shot a man dead in front of them.

Which would’ve stung, from anyone, especially after all the times Clint had assured him that everyone would be happy for him, but it just had to be _Tony_ , didn’t it. Out of everyone he’d met in this new life, it just had to be the devastatingly handsome genius, with the roguish smile and the sparkling eyes; the one person who always seemed to know what movie Steve would like, what kind of food he should try, what sort of clothes he should wear to feel like he fit in without feeling like he was dressed in a Normal Human costume.

Tony had used to make him feel so safe, so _welcome_. Like he wasn’t out of place after all. Like he was wanted here. Tony had made Steve feel like he had a home.

And he was _so goddamn beautiful_.

Even before the fateful day at the park, Steve had dared to imagine, just once or twice, what it would be like if Tony were like him. At the time, Steve had pictured a secret tryst, rushed encounters behind locked doors. He’d mostly kept a lid on those thoughts, though. They hadn’t been worth the risk.

After Clint had explained, though...that was much worse. Steve had started to wonder what it might be like to hold Tony’s hand. To sit with him in the park. To share an embrace, unhurried, not worrying who might see. To see him stumble out to breakfast one morning, still half-asleep and rumpled, with his hair sticking up like it always did, and just kiss him. Right in front of everyone.

Steve knew, now, that he should’ve tempered those fantasies, taken the time to imagine a world where Tony found him disgusting, once he knew the truth, but he hadn’t. He’d let himself hope, and he’d had his teeth kicked in.

He took a deep breath, scrubbed his hands over his face, and did what he always did, these days, if his thoughts had started spiraling in dark directions: he whistled for Penny. A good game of tug-of-war and a little friend to cuddle on the couch while he caught up on “classic” movies would take his mind off Tony.

Penny failed to appear in the kitchen.

Steve whistled again, waited a moment longer, and gave up.

“JARVIS, is Penny in the apartment?”

“Not at present, Captain,” the AI replied smoothly. “Miss Rogers is currently on the communal floor, and seems disinclined to follow my summons back to the elevator.”

Steve smiled and shook his head. They’d been working on training Penny to respond to a list of commands from JARVIS, and teaching her how to communicate her needs to JARVIS in return. Ostensibly, the main idea was that JARVIS would be able to move her to the safest possible room and make sure she was fed and otherwise tended in an emergency. In practice, so far, it mostly meant that Penny knew how to call elevators and go on secret adventures to the common floor.

It also meant that Penny was officially a registered user in JARVIS’s system, therefore JARVIS stubbornly insisted on addressing her by a “formal” title, as only Penny could change her own designation in the system. Steve strongly suspected this was bullshit, but he couldn’t prove it without asking Tony, and. Well.

Steve shoved off the counter, smile fading, and headed for the elevators. “Okay, I’ll get her myself,” he sighed. “I think she’d like you better if we could rig some kind of direct positive reinforcement system for you to use. Some kind of reward you can give her without me needing to be there.”

“Perhaps, Captain.” JARVIS allowed, his voice transitioning into the interior of the elevator as Steve boarded. “Mister Stark may have some ideas on the subject, if you would care to ask him.”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, under his breath. Not likely. “We’ll see.”

Steve kept his thoughts to himself as the elevator rose, and exited, per JARVIS’s directions, toward the library. He didn’t call for Penny; it never seemed polite to wander around shared areas shouting, no matter who was home. That being the case, the scene that greeted him as he slipped into the library and started scanning corners for his wayward pet was as candid and unguarded as it was utterly unexpected.

Far back along the right-hand wall, tucked up at the base of some stairs, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the floor, was Tony. Steve couldn’t see much of his face from here, but he was drawing the sort of wet, ragged breaths that suggested a long bout of sobbing that had only just come to an end. Clearly, Clint’s estimation that Tony was “in some kind of mood” had been a bit of an understatement, and the last week’s awkwardness aside, Steve’s first impulse was to run to him and find out what was wrong.

He was paralyzed, though, by confusion, at the fact that Tony appeared to have been doing his sobbing _on Penny_.

As Steve stood watching, still unnoticed in the doorway, Tony tilted his head up a little from where he’d had his face buried in Penny’s shoulder, staring into the distance with red-rimmed eyes.

“Good god, that was a lot,” Tony muttered, almost inaudible but for Steve’s enhanced hearing. He glanced down suddenly, seeming surprised to notice the dog in his arms. “And where did you come from, madam?” he asked, bemused. He brought up a hand to stroke her neck and she rewarded him with a doggy smile, mouth open and panting. “Yes, I see, you smelled someone who needed a hug, very well done. You’re a good kid, Charlie Brown. However, you are also most definitely playing hooky and absolutely ruining your father’s plans for the day, he’s probably looking everywhere for--oh.”

Tony stuttered to a halt, looking like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, as Steve dropped onto the carpet beside him. They stared at each other for a minute. Steve had no idea where to begin.

“Are you okay?” he settled for eventually.

“Peachy,” Tony quipped back at once. He faked a smile, but it faltered quickly and he seemed to give up on the act. “I’ll be fine,” he amended, much more softly.

Steve bit back the impulse to insist, and looked away, deflating. Tony didn’t want to talk to him. He had to respect that. They sat in silence for a few moments. Steve was trying to figure out a polite way to ask for his dog back so he could leave, since Tony didn’t seem to want him around, when Tony spoke up again.

“Steve?” he began, hesitant, “I’m...I’m so sorry. I’ve been a terrible friend.”

“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve whispered back, still inspecting the carpet. “You can’t help how you feel.”

“Oof, wow,” Tony grimaced so hard Steve could hear it, without looking at him. “That obvious, huh?”

Steve shrugged one shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

Tony gave a wet laugh and a wetter sniffle. “That’s no excuse for being a dick about it,” he paused, and the jingling of Penny’s collar suggested that he was petting her to give himself time to think. “You deserve to be happy. I had no right to just...cut you off like that.”

Steve took a steadying breath, willing himself not to get choked up. Tony’s tearful tone wasn’t helping. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt, that you don’t want to be my friend anymore,” he admitted. “But if you’re uncomfortable I’m not going to force you. I hope we can still work together, at least.”

“What the fuck?” Tony put a hand on his shoulder, tugging slightly until Steve met his eyes. His brow was creased with concern. “I _do_ want to be your friend, Steve, that’s what I’m trying to say. I took the news badly, but that’s on me, that’s a completely me-problem, and I’ll get through it. I’ll do better.”

At a loss, Steve nodded, accepting, and let himself settle back against the shelves, shoulder to shoulder with Tony. Another few seconds of silence passed. This time, Steve spoke up first.

“If we’re still friends, then, I…” he trailed off, but cleared his throat and soldiered on. “You look like you could use a hug?” Steve raised his eyebrows and half-lifted one arm, questioning and offering.

“You’re not wrong,” Tony snorted, and tilted into Steve’s side without further preamble.

Steve wrapped his arm around Tony’s shoulders. Penny, jostled by the shifting, shuffled until she was laying across both of their laps, with her head on Steve’s thigh. Steve reached down with his free hand to rub her ears.

“...I missed you,” Tony whispered.

“I missed you, too,” Steve whispered back. Some of the sick, tight feeling he’d been carrying around in his chest for the last week finally began to unclench, and this time the brief silence didn’t feel so fraught.

“I thought you didn’t like dogs,” Steve remarked, eventually.

“The fuck you what now?” Tony mumbled, still scratching absently at a spot on Penny’s flank. “Says who?”

“This is literally the first time I’ve ever seen you interact with Penny in any way, and she’s been here for half a month.”

“...oh,” Tony froze for a moment, and seemed to shrink in on himself a little. “I didn’t...I mean, I don’t know. She’s yours.”

Steve felt his insides wither. He started to pull back, but Tony grabbed his wrist to keep his arm in place.

“Jesus, no, not like that,” Tony said in a rush. “I mean before that. She’s just a big sweetie and you clearly wanted her so much, needed her even, and I wanted to make sure she knew she was yours, so I tried to give you two some time to get to close, and then…” he looked away and released Steve’s wrist, hunching up again. “I guess dog-time seemed like a special thing for you and Clint. I didn’t belong there. Oh shit, speaking of Clint, what am I doing? You’ve got places to be, god, get out of here, he’s waiting for you,” he sat up suddenly and started trying to scoop Penny’s back half off his lap and push her toward Steve. She was unimpressed.

“Clint left twenty minutes ago, what are you talking about?” Steve rearranged Penny until she was curled up in his lap, since Tony apparently didn’t want her on him anymore, but stayed where he was.

Tony looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Well then get after him!”

“Clint is going to see his boyfriend this weekend,” Steve said slowly, “He said you knew that.”

Tony squinted at him, incredulous, and peered at him sideways. He pointed a finger at Steve’s chest. Steve’s jaw dropped.

“I am _not_ Clint’s boyfriend!” Steve held his hands up, horrified. “Clint’s a nice fella, but no. No. No thank you.”

Tony looked absolutely flabbergasted. “Wha--of course you are!!”

“I am _definitely not_.”

“You came out together!”

“Nnnnno?” Steve’s voice rose until he was pretty sure only Penny heard the end of the word. “That was only me. Clint was just helping. Because I didn’t know that was a thing I could do, until he told me.”

“But...you’ve shown up for breakfast together every morning for the last two weeks. Like, clearly coming from the same room.”

“We walk Penny in the mornings. We take her back to my place before breakfast so that everyone doesn’t feed her bacon.”

“His suitcase was full of dog toys??”

“He has his own dog, Tony, it lives at his boyfriend’s sister’s house in the country right now,” Steve explained. “Clint’s partner is a SHIELD agent. I don’t know much about him except that he was injured in the invasion and he’s been recovering at his sister’s house upstate. Clint was hoping to bring him back here and introduce him, once he’s better, although,” Steve paused, feeling his ears go red at the familiar, ingrained shame. “I know...having me and Clint here is clearly a lot, already, for you, and we don’t...this is your home, we won’t expect you to open your doors for more of us.”

“More of _what?!_ ”

Steve swallowed heavily. “Gay people.”

Tony’s eyes bulged out of his head. “You--what--you think I--Steve, if I couldn’t stand the sight of queer people, I’d need to have all the mirrors taken out of the penthouse.”

Steve sat back as if he’d been slapped, every other thought and emotion replaced by shock.

“Oh my god, you thought I hated you,” Tony tangled both hands in his own hair and fell back against the wall of books. His eyes flicked back and forth as if scanning images only he could see. Reviewing memories of the last few weeks in a new light, probably. “Holy shit, I’ve outdone myself, this is, that is awful, what the fuck. You thought I _hated_ you?”

“Don’t you?” Steve’s voice had gone very small.

“No!!” Tony threw both arms around Steve’s neck and hugged him very tightly, if from an awkward angle, just for a moment. Then he backed off, leaving his hands on Steve’s shoulders. “Never, Steve. You’re my goddamn favorite, I could never hate you. And the B stands for Bisexual, not Bigot, thanks.”

Steve couldn’t help smiling along with Tony’s crooked grin and single raised eyebrow, though he was still confused. “But, if that’s true, then why did you look at me like I’d just murdered someone when I said I was...?”

Tony drew back and looked away, his body language going falsely casual. Desperately nonchalant. “I thought you were with Clint.”

“How does that--” Steve began, before his brain caught up, arranging the thoughts _Tony is attracted to men_ and _Tony said I was his favorite_ alongside _“I thought you were with Clint”_ and creating a very interesting picture. “Oh.”

“Fuuuuuck,” Tony breathed out, sounding utterly defeated. “I have to start all over now, apparently I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for, the first time. I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

“You know what,” Steve cut him off, “I think you’re right. We should start over.”

Steve sat up tall and squared his shoulders. Penny, disturbed from her comfortable lap yet again, finally gave up on humans as furniture and sat herself upright on the floor between them.

“Good morning, Tony,” Steve stated, in a prompting tone.

“Good...morning?”

“I’ve learned a few interesting new things about this century, lately,” Steve began, suddenly feeling nervous all over again. Understanding started to dawn on Tony’s face, though, so Steve carried on. “I’ve thought about it, and I wanted you to be one of the first people I tell: I’m gay,” Steve paused for a quick, steadying breath. He’d avoided actually saying those words, the first time, but it felt important to face it now. “I prefer the company of men, romantically speaking, and I always have.”

Steve’s voice was shaking by the end of his declaration, but, this time, Tony was smiling up at him with the exact sort of soft, gentle understanding that Steve had so desperately hoped for a week ago.

“That’s great, Steve,” he said, and the words were warm, genuine. “I’m so glad that you trust me to know that, and that you got to live to see a world that’s more welcoming of that truth.”

Steve shifted a little closer, almost subconsciously. “It makes for a nice change,” he agreed, watching the way Tony watched him. God, he must have been blind not to see it before.

Tony blushed a little.  “As it happens, I’m often attracted to men, myself.”

“Is that so?” Steve tried to affect a tone of mild interest, but couldn’t be bothered to put much effort into the facade, with the way Tony was looking up at him through lowered lashes and from an ever-decreasing distance.

“Quite a coincidence, isn’t it,” Tony observed. He wet his lips. “I think the subject might bear further discussion, if you’re amenable. I could take you to lunch?”

Steve leaned in, smiling.

Penny, who had been watching this exchange avidly, positioned with her nose exactly at face-height, only a few inches away, sneezed enormously.

“GYEUGH!”

“OH GOD NO.”

Steve tumbled backwards, scrubbing mysterious wetness from his face with both hands only to find himself with two hands full of wet instead. He glimpsed Tony through squinted eyes, apparently trying to squirm out of his own skin while scrubbing his face with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Nonono my mouth was open,” Tony was babbling through embarrassed laughter. Somehow, he managed to find his feet and scramble toward the door. “Party foul, I’m out, JARVIS I need some kind of face-shower, hot as possible--” He disappeared out of the library for a brief moment, before leaning just his face and one arm back through the door to point at Steve and shout “LUNCH!” and then he was gone.


	4. Like a bad Penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the interest of not missing a week completely, here's about half of what would have been the last chapter. More next week-ish!

Steve had started off with rinsing his face, but by the end he realized he’d pretty much washed his whole upper half in the sink, and felt a little foolish for not having just taken a shower. It had only been a _sneeze,_ though. Surely being sneezed on didn’t merit an entire shower.

Then again, Tony had asked him out. On a real date. In public. With Tony.

Steve hesitated for about five seconds, then shucked off his pants, ducked around the door into the shower, and washed the other half.

Thirty-five minutes later it was still only a quarter past eleven in the morning, but the plan had been a bit light on details so Steve had shown up back on the common floor twenty-eight minutes ago with his walking shoes on and his dog harnessed. He’d combed his hair the old-fashioned way (because he was still sure he wasn’t doing it right when he tried to do it any different) and was dressed in a soft blue henley, a leather bomber jacket, and a worryingly tight pair of jeans that Clint had once told him to wear if he should find himself stepping out with a fella.

He was also trailing a rather regrettable funk made up of the ghosts of the four different colognes he’d tried and then tried to wash back off, but at this point he could only pray that Tony, as a regular human with regular senses, would probably only pick up on the one he’d accidentally sloshed all the way down his forearm.

If Tony didn’t show up soon, there was going to be a trench in the floor all the way around the sofa in the sunken living room. Steve just couldn’t sit still. Penny sat on one of the armchairs, watching him orbit and whining occasionally. She had her leash on and Steve had the big bag full of dog things, and that meant _outside_ but this was not outside, Steve, you’re doing it wrong, come back, outside, hey, _outside_.

The faint sound of absent-minded whistling preceded Tony into the room, and then trailed off abruptly. Steve spun on his heel, toward the sound, only to find Tony frozen in place, paused in the act of straightening his jacket, lips still pursed, in mid-stride.

Either something had gone terribly wrong, or the jeans were working.

“...wow,” Tony said softly. By the huskiness of his tone, Steve judged it must’ve been option two.

“Hi,” Steve tried to reply, but then he got his first good look at Tony.

_Oh._

Where Steve’s approach to date-readiness had mainly involved military efficiency and nervous pacing, Tony appeared to have actually put the last half hour to its fullest possible use. And in the hands of someone who understood modern beauty routines and had needed to look Very Good for a wide variety of occasions over the last forty years, it seemed half an hour could be put to _quite a lot_ of use.

For a moment, Steve actually had a little trouble reconciling what was before him now with the pajama-clad ball of emotion he’d found on the library floor. What exactly Tony had done to his face and hair was far beyond Steve’s ability to say, but he looked fresh, energized, and not at all like he’d been weeping on someone else’s dog an hour ago. His hair, unlike Steve’s outdated side-part, had been teased into some kind of gravity-defying fluff that looked effortless, natural, and extremely soft. Steve sort of wanted to pet it. A lot.

Tony was wearing bright red sneakers (which were probably deceptively expensive and designer), dark-wash jeans (at _least_ as tight as Steve’s), and a sharp sport coat, open, over a printed t-shirt that had a picture of Steve’s shield on it (what).

“Oh,” Steve breathed, aloud this time. Tony cringed.

“It’s too much, isn’t it,” he tried to pull the jacket shut over the shirt, but the cut of the neckline wouldn’t quite allow him to hide the whole design. He started to backpedal toward the door he’d come in by. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I knew it would be too much, I’ll go change.”

“No, don’t,” Steve took a step toward him, reaching, but hesitated before he was close enough to touch. “Um. Please? I like it,” he stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced away, cheeks burning. “It’s flattering.”

Tony relaxed a little, and stopped trying to flee. A half-smile crept onto his face. “To you, or on me?”

“Both,” Steve grinned back.

“Yes, well,” Tony let the jacket fall back open but crossed his arms. “Apparently I made you think I was barely tolerating your existence, you’ll have to forgive me if I over-correct a little.”

“Did you send someone out to buy that, just now?”

“No, I already had it. Since before you rejoined the living, actually,” Tony began to saunter nearer. “Rhodey gave it to me, along with some big speech about heroes that he could barely keep a straight face through because we both knew very well the real reason was to tease me for the big box of Cap merch I tried to hang all over our first dorm room, and which he did in front of Pepper so that I couldn’t smack him for it.”

He strolled right past Steve and over to Penny. “I wore it around the house a few times but never out, didn’t want to spawn any human interest stories about Iron Man being inspired by Those Who Had Come Before,” he scratched Penny’s ears, carefully pronouncing the capital letters, “Then you were real again, and then you suddenly lived at my house, so I thought it’d probably be weird to show up with it on. Speaking of our sartorial choices,” he hooked a finger under one of the straps of Penny’s harness and gave it a couple of tugs, “What’s this about? Taking your little lady skydiving later?”

Steve chuckled, electing to forgive the transparent change of subject. “She has strong feelings about birds, and how they all need to be caught and brought to me as soon as she sees them,” he explained. He stepped over into dog-petting range, which was also, as a pure coincidence, much closer to Tony. He settled his hand at the scruff of her neck. “Sometimes that means she pulls on the leash, and since the thing she’s pulling against is me, we figured distributing the force away from her throat was a good idea.”

Tony laughed, but Penny tilted her head all the way back to stare up at Steve with the aggrieved gaze of a very good girl who had been wearing her OUTSIDE gear for some time now and yet was still, despite all logic, inside. Steve smiled at her and ruffled her ears. He picked up the end of her leash and she began to wag furiously, ears pricking forward.

“Ready to go?” Steve asked Tony.

“I am. Do you need that?” Tony waved a hand at the messenger bag full of dog stuff, which Steve had left on the sofa during his pacing.

“Yes! I do!” Steve flushed slightly and jogged the short distance across the room to get it.

When he turned back, Tony had the end of Penny’s leash in his hand. By his bemused expression, Steve must have passed it off to him without thinking. Before Steve could give so much as an “oops, sorry” and take it back, though, Tony’s face had settled into a pleased, almost proud expression, and he’d wound a hand through the loop.

Steve gave a mental shrug. If Tony wanted to walk Penny, that was fine. Good, actually. It’d be good for them to get to know each other.

The three of them boarded the elevator. About halfway down, Tony wrinkled his nose and turned toward Steve with one eyebrow up.

“You get an endorsement deal with Calvin Klein I should know about?”

Steve stared at him blankly for about three floors, before the image of a small glass bottle with that brand name on the front floated to the top of his recent memory.

“No,” he said, stonefaced in spite of the burning feeling in his ears. “In fact I’m considering suing them for emotional damages.”

Tony looked genuinely shocked for a moment, but then seemed to remember that this was what a joke looked like when Steve told it. He burst out laughing. “What happened?”

“All the other scents I found in the drawer had these neat little stoppers in them,” Steve explained calmly, working hard to keep a straight face and not hide behind his hands. “One drop at a time. Sensible. _That one_ was just...open.”

Tony laughed harder. “Did you pour it down your neck?” he teased.

“Just down my arm, and I think some may have gotten on my shoes,” Steve allowed himself a wry grimace. “Not the worst that could have happened, but still not the most auspicious start to a first date.”

Tony gasped, very softly.

Steve froze. His eyes went very wide.

After about two more floors, he dared to look at Tony.

“This is...this is a date, right?”

“I was hoping so,” Tony answered, and Steve’s world suddenly seemed to contain oxygen once more. “I mean, it felt like we were flirting at the end there in the library and you looked like you wanted to kiss me but then there was Penny and kissing was no, and by the time I was picking out clothes I realized nobody had said date? And we used to get lunch all the time? So maybe it wasn’t?”

Steve smiled. “It’s a date, Tony,” he said softly. Now, he allowed himself to duck his head shyly. “Or anyway, I’d like it to be.”

“Oh. Good,” Tony cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter. He was suddenly looking anywhere but at Steve, and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

Steve knew what he’d like to do with Tony’s hands.

Back in that window between finding out he could _be_ out and finding out--or rather, falling under the mistaken impression--that Tony would hate him for it, he’d dreamed of a chance like this. A simple, private moment. A small intimacy he could share with the fella he liked.

Steve sidled a little closer. Tony glanced at him, with a nervous smile playing about his lips. Steve reached out, warmth blooming in his chest and butterflies in his stomach, intending to slip his palm into Tony’s and lace their fingers together.

The elevator doors opened with a faint _bing._

Tony vanished.

Or rather, Tony was yanked violently out the doors so quickly that Steve lost sight of him for a moment. Steve could feel his body ratcheting up into SAVE TONY mode in the blink it took to locate him again, but before he could make it a full step out the doors after him, the picture took shape.

Tony was sprawled out full length on the marble floor, clearly startled but already gathering himself up, with his right arm outstretched. His right arm, which was holding the leash leading to an equally-startled Penny. Penny, who was standing in front of the bank of windows (where a planter box currently hosting several pigeons was clearly visible), and who was looking back at Tony with an alarmed expression that plainly read: _that’s not what usually happens when I pull on the leash_.

 

****

 

“I did warn you,” Steve insisted, unwrapping his sandwich. “I was very clear about what happens when she sees a bird.”

“Yes, and you’ve taught her that she can run to the end of the leash at mach three and you and your scientifically-impossible rotator cuffs won’t budge an inch,” Tony complained, rolling his shoulder out again, melodramatically. Steve showed no sympathy.

Probably because Steve, like most people who had been on at least one mission with Iron Man, had figured out that if Tony was complaining, he was actually fine. It was when Tony insisted that he was perfectly all right and no, thanks, he would not like to go to medical, no need to take off the armor right now, Steve, stop asking--that’s when he should not be allowed to get as far as a room with lockdown protocols until he’d proven that all his bones were still lined up in the right order and none of his major organs had escaped.

“My rotator cuffs are not scientifically impossible,” Steve scoffed. “They’re scientifically _optimal_.”

“Oh, baby, talk anatomy to me,” Tony drawled, smiling lasciviously. He settled back against the park bench and started peeling the paper back from his own sandwich. “And anyway, who expects a ten-pound dog to be able to generate that kind of force from a standing stop?”

“Penny’s nearly forty pounds.”

“She is not.”

“She is.”

“Never. She’s just a little baby.”

“She’s at least three years old, the vet said.”

“Captain! You can’t just announce a lady’s age like that!” Tony clutched at his chest in mock horror, then turned and leaned down to place a consoling hand on Penny’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to him, sweetheart, you don’t look a day over two.”

Penny seemed unconcerned with talk of her age and/or weight; her entire focus was on Tony’s sandwich. She was staring at his ham-on-rye like she thought if she hoped hard enough, it might magically fly into her mouth. Tony smiled at her, ruffled her ears, sat up and turned back to Steve.

Steve was looking at Tony more or less the same way the dog had looked at his lunch.

Tony’s heart did a little flip in his chest.

Calm, suave, and smooth, Tony leaned back against the bench, looked away, and stuffed his mouth full of sandwich so that no regrettable declarations could sneak out before his brain came back online. Not that he wouldn’t _mean_ the things he was tempted to say, obviously. It was just that he’d only been dating Steve for about twenty minutes so far and any declaration above “that jacket looks good on you” would probably be A Lot at this point.

Then again, this _was_ a date. Very definitely a real date, Steve had been very clear on that, even if he did seem to be in an adorable dither about what that meant he could actually _do_. Tony had spotted him reaching out to hold hands with him at least six times since they’d left the tower, but the poor guy had lost his nerve and aborted the attempt every time. It occurred to Tony that maybe taking some initiative would be a helpful and productive contribution to the proceedings.

After a sufficient interval of sandwich-eating to gather up his nerve, Tony dared to look at Steve again. The big handsome goof had a smear of mustard halfway across his cheek. Tony stifled a laugh, and reached over to wipe it away with his thumb.

Steve went perfectly still. Tony hadn’t been thinking of it as a romantic move, but from the way it got Steve’s attention, maybe it ought to be. He slowed the motion down, letting his fingers curl around Steve’s jaw and settle there for a moment. His thumb pressed into the soft skin of Steve’s cheek, dragging through the offending smudge and leaving him clean. His cheek was also, by the time Tony was done with it, quite a bit warmer than it had started out.

Smiling, Tony glanced up to meet Steve’s eyes. The way Steve was looking at him took his breath away, even though he’d been more or less expecting it. Those baby-blue eyes had gone dark and wide, his lips slightly parted, a flush high on his cheeks, and his whole expression open and fragile and hopeful.

Tony needed to break the tension (again, twenty-minute-old relationship), so he pulled back his hand to show Steve his mustard-covered thumb, and gave a slightly reproachful little tilt of his head, as if to say _I can’t take you anywhere._

Steve looked at the thumb and snorted with self-conscious laughter. Tony chuckled softly along with him.

And then, unthinking, Tony licked the mustard off his hand.

Steve was immediately making the face again.

This time, the tension was broken by Tony grunting urgently and pointing at Penny, who, sensing weakness and distraction, had edged slowly closer until she was finally able to delicately snatch all the turkey out of the sandwich that had been drooping between Steve’s knees.

“What--no! Hey! Bad! Droppit!”

Steve leapt up to try and catch her. Penny scrambled away, snarfing deli meat as fast as possible while also trying very hard not to be wherever Steve was. Tony would’ve helped, but he was too busy laughing his ass off.


	5. Worth Every Penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hu·bris /ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/ (noun): The act of establishing a weekly publishing schedule for a fic you have not yet finished writing.
> 
> I am sorry for my sins, here is seven thousand words of dog fluff.

Nineteen hours later, Steve still wasn’t entirely over the mustard thing.

Plenty else had happened since then, but that. Thing with the mustard. 

That sure had been a thing.

Steve rammed his metal spatula under the hash browns he was frying, with more aggression than they probably deserved. Separating a thick crust of caramelized potato from hot cast iron did take  _ some  _ effort under normal circumstances, just, maybe, less than he was using now. Less than he would use if his head weren’t full of the memory of twinkling brown eyes crinkling at the corners and a warm, calloused palm resting softly against his jaw. Much less than he’d use if not full of excess energy from watching, from, the way Tony’s  _ tongue _ \--and knowing that mustard had been on his  _ face, _ from his own sandwich, it was  _ his, _ almost like--

Steve took a deep breath, flipped the hash browns, and shifted over to the bacon. Plenty of time for that sort of thinking later. Right now was time for family breakfast. At half scale, today, with Clint and Nat and Thor out of town, but Steve still needed to start his day with enough calories to choke a team of Western Union horses, and Tony and Bruce would probably turn up if they smelled coffee. 

Sure enough, the soft sound of slippered feet shuffling on hardwood caught Steve’s attention. He turned toward the source just as Tony hove into view around the edge of the cabinets, zombie-walking toward the coffee maker with his eyes barely open. Steve smiled, and, without thinking, stepped into his path. He didn’t quite realize he’d done it until Tony walked straight into him--a low-speed collision, but Tony rebounded off his front with a small, sad noise and Steve had to catch his arms before he could topple over.

“Sorry!” Steve gasped, steadying him. He ran a hand up to Tony’s shoulder and squeezed in further apology. “Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to block you.”

Tony blinked up at him, twice, then his face split in a sleepy grin as he seemed to process what he’d run into. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself,” Steve answered. He’d been prepared for Tony to push past toward caffeine, but instead he reached for Steve, tucking his arms around Steve’s sides and folding slowly into his chest with a deeply-satisfied sigh. A rush of surprised affection warmed Steve from tip to toes as his own arms fell into position of their own accord, cradling Tony close, wrapping around him and drawing him in to shelter just as if that were the most natural and correct thing to do. 

Which it was, of course.

The motion also caused the muscles in his chest to contract in a way that Steve often found mildly alarming--even now, so long after Rebirth--at least when there wasn’t anything to distract him from what his own body was doing. They way his pectorals sort of... _ plumped up _ when flexed just didn’t match with any image of himself that he’d ever carried. It wasn’t the most distressing thing he’d had to work his mind around after the serum, but it still caught his attention sometimes, and he didn’t know how to feel about it.

That is, until Tony made a soft, intrigued noise in the back of his throat that wasn’t quite a hum and wasn’t quite a word, and promptly buried his face in what could really only be described as Steve’s cleavage. He then seemed to melt, going entirely boneless and slack, trusting Steve to hold him up. 

Steve felt himself heat again, this time with something a shade warmer than affection. He curled a little tighter around Tony, bringing one hand up to cradle the base of his skull and laying his cheek against the top of his head. He nuzzled into Tony’s hair and breathed in deeply, scenting the faint traces of yesterday’s shampoo and a warm, sleepy smell laced with what must have been fabric softener from his sheets. 

“Oh. That’s new.”

Steve’s head snapped up. Bruce was halfway across the kitchen, not having paused in his own bee-line to coffee.

“That is new, right?” Bruce said again, taking down a mug and waving it in their direction. “I feel like I would have noticed.”

Steve stared, cheeks flaming, as Bruce poured his coffee. He didn’t know what to say, because, well. “We...haven’t talked about what we want to tell the team.”

“Very new, then,” Bruce said with a nod and a wry, warm smile. He settled back against the edge of the counter. “Well, congratulations, on whatever you want to tell me after Tony regains sentience.”

Steve choked on a laugh. “He’s not  _ that  _ bad in the morning, he’s just a little--” Steve stopped himself in mid-thought, distracted by a faint rumbling noise vibrating through his chest. Tony was snoring. “Oh my god he fell asleep,” he whispered.

Bruce snorted into his coffee. “Here,” he set down the mug and stepped closer, plucking the spatula from Steve’s hands. Steve hadn’t realized he’d still been holding that. “I’ll take over breakfast, you deal with this.”

“Thanks.”

Steve turned his attention to the man sleeping in his arms, trying not to be too embarrassed  that Bruce was witnessing this moment. After a little awkward shuffling he concluded that it wasn’t worth worrying about whether he might wake Tony, and simply swept an arm behind his knees and scooped him up into a bridal carry. Tony stirred and muttered something under his breath that Steve couldn’t make out, but his eyes never opened; he just nestled back into Steve’s chest, and was snoring lightly again by the time they reached the sofa. Gently, Steve lowered him into the cushions. Tony gave no sign of complaint. At least, not until Steve started to stand up and move away.

The moment they were far enough apart not to share body heat, Tony let out a low, mournful hum and his arms rose up in Steve’s wake, making feeble grabby hands at him. 

“Aw, Tony,” Steve reached back for him and let Tony take his hands. He couldn’t not. “I’m not going far, I promise.”

“You can stay with him, Steve,” Bruce offered. “I’m fine here.”

Steve hovered for a moment, tempted, but Tony’s grip had already gone lax again. Steve eased Tony’s arms back down onto the cushions, and this time, Tony didn’t seem to notice when he let go. Still, he lingered, just a bit, brushing sleep-wild hair away from Tony’s forehead and leaving a soft kiss in its place. Eventually, though, he tore himself away and headed back to the kitchen.

“You sure?” Bruce prodded, with a knowing side-eye.

“He’s fine,” Steve tried to sound unbothered and sure of himself, slotting back into place in front of the stove. “Can’t keep his eyes open. I’ll take him some coffee in a minute.”

A few seconds passed, with only the sizzling of breakfast to break the silence.

“I don’t want to take advantage,” Steve added, very quietly. “He’s not all there, and it’s too soon to assume. Even little things.”

“Okay,” Bruce allowed. “Good to hear you’re into boundaries, I was worried we might need to have a talk. About that bruise on Tony’s arm.”

The blush Steve had been fighting with varying levels of success all morning suddenly redoubled; he was mildly surprised that his shirt didn’t catch fire, as hot as his skin was. It was pretty obvious what Bruce was referring to: the sleeves of Tony’s sleep shirt were just short enough to show off a deep purple, perfectly hand-shaped bruise on his right bicep. The exact size and shape of Steve’s right hand. “You should see the one on his ass,” he muttered, trying not to die on the spot.

“Steve?” Bruce’s tone was warning, and Steve looked up to see a faint rim of green around his irises. 

“No! Oh god, no, hey, not like that. I mean, it is there, but it’s not like that,” he raised both hands in a warding gesture. 

Bruce gestured for Steve to continue, then leaned back and crossed his arms. Steve took a deep breath.

“It wasn’t like that, we weren’t...” Steve trailed off. “I would never hurt him on purpose. I would never, ever raise my hand to my partner. Never, Bruce.”

That seemed a little more like what Bruce had needed to hear. The green went out of his eyes, and his stance loosened a bit. “Okay.”

They each turned back to their pans, Steve swapping out for a second batch of hash browns and Bruce whipping together some eggs to scramble, now that the bacon was nearly done.

“It’s probably none of my business,” Bruce ventured after a few more moments, with an apologetic wince, “And you don’t have to answer, but now I’m thinking about it and it’s going to bother me, so I have to ask: how  _ did  _ that bruise get there?”

“Ah,” Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “It was an accident?”

 

The day before, after lunch and the Mustard Incident, Steve’s date with Tony had carried them onward into Central Park on a leisurely walk. Tony had been a bit more solicitous after lunch, never quite unambiguously romantic ( _ cameras everywhere, _ he’d warned with a grimace), but taking every excuse to throw an arm around Steve’s shoulder or squeeze his arm and directing lots of affection at Penny, who very much enjoyed serving as their socially-acceptable proxy. 

Unfortunately, Penny also very much enjoyed leaping directly into the pond after a duck while Steve was too busy  _ being on a date _ to monitor how much leash she was allowed in known bird-zones. Steve was a lot harder to topple than Tony, though, so she could only paddle in very small circles that never managed to get her any nearer to the ducks. Tony thought that was almost as funny as the sandwich theft, until she staggered back up the bank and gleefully shook a coatful of water onto them both. 

After a few shared laughs and looks of exasperation, they opted to continue walking (in the sunnier and less duck-infested areas of the park) until they dried off enough to be comfortable on the shadier path home. 

Once they arrived back at the tower, though, they also arrived at one of the tricky moments Steve had feared about modern dating. They punched the elevator buttons for both his floor and Tony’s, and of course came to Steve’s first. The doors slid open, and he hesitated. 

“So,” Steve tried. Penny trotted out the door and looked back at him with bland reproach when he didn’t follow. Steve winced and reached down to unclip her leash as quickly as he could, then stood back up to face Tony, who was watching him expectantly, hands in his pockets. “So.”

“So?” Tony parroted back, smiling slightly. Penny wandered off and presumably found somewhere soft to lie down.

“So,” Steve tried again. “I’m worried I’m going to say this wrong.”

“Two centuries separated by a common language?” Tony’s smile was getting wider, but his posture was tensing up. “I’m sure we can figure out what you’re trying to say if you use enough words. Lay it on me.”

“Well, I want to say that I’ve had a lovely time this afternoon, and I’d like to invite you in for a drink,” Steve began. Tony, very carefully, did not react. “Or coffee, or something. But it’s been suggested to me that offering coffee or drinks after a date means something more now.”

“Sex is pretty strongly implied, usually,” Tony chuckled. “Don’t worry, Cap, your virtue is safe with me.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “What virtue? I’ve had plenty of sex, Tony. I just never got to do any of the courting. Dating. Whatever you call it.” He turned away, rubbing the back of his neck in flustered embarrassment. 

That got Tony to react, although it was still difficult to say how he was feeling. Half-suppressed emotions chased each other across his face rapid-fire as he fit that new information into his knowledge of Steve’s life and experiences. “Oh,” was all he said. 

Steve deflated a little. He hoped that that was understanding he’d heard in Tony’s short response, but it could all too easily have been disgust, or disappointment. 

“You know,” Tony added, after a beat, “I always figured all those rules and shorthands were for a pretty specific set of people, anyway.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for Steve’s. Steve held his breath. Tony gathered Steve’s right hand into both of his own, smoothing it between his palms. “Third dates, coffee...all that stuff is for the serial daters. People who meet in singles bars and want to feel like they know where they stand with a stranger.” He freed his right hand to take Steve’s left, and laced their fingers together. “I think a couple of good friends can say what they mean, and do what they want when they feel ready, don’t you?”

Steve grinned. “Want to Netflix and chill?”

Tony threw his head back and laughed. “I’d love to, but Barton is fired from teaching you about dating.”

Ten minutes later they were settled on the sofa, squished in together at one end, half-empty coffee cups abandoned on the table in front of them. Tony had picked out a rather inscrutable show called “Dog Cops,” which Steve thought he might have enjoyed if he’d been paying much attention to it. 

They’d started out a polite distance apart; not far, only a few inches, but giving one another space to breathe. That space had evaporated quickly, though, under the thin guise of mumbled complaints about having gotten chilled while walking around the city in wet clothes (which were quite dry now). Tony had scooched a little closer, Steve had rested a hand on his knee, Tony had leaned into him, Steve had shifted his arm to loop around Tony’s shoulders, Tony’s far hand had found its way to Steve’s inner thigh...by now, Steve was half-reclined against the arm of the sofa, and Tony had stretched out with his legs up behind him and most of his torso draped over Steve’s. 

Tony nudged a little closer for the umpteenth time and Steve shifted in response, twisting a little in his seat to open his lap toward Tony. In doing so, he glanced down, and his breath caught. He couldn’t look away.

It took Tony almost two full minutes to notice that Steve had frozen up. He craned his neck back to look up at Steve, puzzled. 

“Hey, you’re not paying attention, you’re missing Sgt. Whiskers’ whole backst--why are you making that face.”

“I…” Steve couldn’t figure out an appropriate way to phrase _ I can see your heart through my star,  _ so he gestured at Tony’s chest, instead. 

Tony looked down, and clearly noted the light shining from under his shirt, right in the middle of the printed Captain America shield. “...ah. Sorry,” he grimaced and brought a hand up to cover the glow. “I wore double layers so this wouldn’t happen, but I guess. Shadows. What can you do.”

He shrugged, obviously uncomfortable, and started to turn away from Steve. As soon as his chest was no longer angled into the shadow between their bodies, the ambient light of the living room drowned out the muffled gleam of the arc reactor. 

“What, no,” Steve caught his hand before he could cover the reactor with it again. “It’s beautiful.”

Tony shot him an incredulous, sideways look. 

Steve brushed the fingers of his other hand through Tony’s hair. “I won’t...it’s only a first date, so I won’t say too much about what I think about it, but it’s an evocative image, those two things together. Don’t you think so?”

He applied a little pressure to the back of Tony’s neck. To Steve’s relief, Tony let himself be guided back into place, smiling softly and relaxing back onto Steve’s chest. “Well, when you put it like  _ that… _ ”

Steve shifted another inch or two down, drawing Tony up over him as he went.

Tony folded his arms over Steve’s chest and propped his chin on them. “Just to be clear, since we're using our words,” he drawled lightly, smirking in that cavalier way that Steve was rapidly beginning to associate with topics that Tony was actually  _ very invested in, _ “You wanted to wait a while on sex, right? Settle into this a bit first?”

“I’d prefer to, if you don’t mind too much.”

“No no, that’s great. Novel experience for me, too; hardly remember the last time I indulged in a little good-old-fashioned dating before the pants hit the floor,” Tony answered, waggling his eyebrows. “What I’d like to know now is if there’s room in your idea of good-old-fashioned dating for some good-old-fashioned  _ necking _ .”

The uncertainty Tony’s first question had inspired melted away. He smiled. “That’s high on the list of things I’d like to try, actually. Why don’t you come up here and show me how it’s done?”

Tony’s bravado fell right off his face. He looked horrified. “Steve, have you never been  _ kissed?!” _

“You didn’t ask for a kiss, you asked if I wanted to suck face.”

Tony nearly swallowed his own tongue. “I am  _ begging  _ you to stop hanging out with Barton.”

“You quit missing the point of my smooth lines, and I’ll quit using modern slang wrong.”

“That line was not smooth and that slang was not mod--yeep!”

Steve felt a little bad about using his strength advantage in this moment, but Tony had been struggling (with little success) against the laughter that threatened to overtake his loud complaints, so it seemed to Steve that he wouldn’t mind a little horseplay. Thus, while Tony was still ranting, Steve had slipped his thigh under Tony’s hips and levered him upward and, at the same time, slid himself down flat on the sofa, with the end result that Tony went briefly airborne, and landed full-length on top of Steve. Their faces were very, very close together.

Tony blinked, dazed from his sudden foray in to un-planned Steve-powered flight. Slowly, realization of where and how he’d landed dawned with a flatteringly wide-eyed and vulnerable expression and a dusky-pink flush that would’ve been too faint to notice from any farther away.

“Hi,” Steve greeted him with a grin. He leaned forward a bare half-inch to brush the end of his nose against Tony’s.

“Hi, yourself,” Tony returned. A warm smile swept the last of the alarm from his features, and he sank forward to meet Steve’s lips with his own.

Now, Steve  _ had  _ been kissed before.

Just, not like this.

Not slow, and sweet, unhurried and soft, without the world ending around him or the fear of being caught or a polite, uninterested goodbye after a polite, uninterested date. 

Never with someone he’d wanted in every way at once. 

Tony was gentle with him, but confident. He tucked up his knees on either side of Steve’s waist, cradled his face in both hands. Ran his fingers through Steve’s hair, seeming to take great satisfaction in mussing up Steve’s careful combing. 

Steve realized he was clinging to Tony maybe a little more desperately than he needed to, hands fisted tightly in the layers of soft cotton over his ribs. He relaxed his grip, consciously opening his hands and sliding them around Tony, up and down his back, pressing him close. He tried to move one to the back of Tony’s head but found he was trapped under the sport coat Tony still had on. He must’ve made a noise, or made his mild annoyance clear in some other way, because Tony sat back and shucked off the jacket before diving right back in. Steve hummed his approval; Tony had much better range of motion now, and Steve had a clear path to tangle his fingers in Tony’s soft, fluffy hair like he’d wanted to for hours--well, months, but who was counting--with the added bonus of gaining the leverage to press back more firmly into the kiss. Tony’s lips were warm and plush, just a tiny bit chapped because he tended to chew them constantly but also used the Very Best lip balm, which Steve could just barely taste as he crushed himself against that softness--

But then Tony’s mouth was open, parting just enough to let his tongue swipe gently across Steve’s lips, like he was asking permission. Steve opened for him at once, because  _ yes, _ now they were getting to places he’d never been, places that Tony knew, and Steve wanted the full tour. Tony’s tongue slipped into his mouth and curled around Steve’s own, a hot, slick tangle that left Steve feeling open and exposed in a way that he hadn’t for years, and the feeling brought home the knowledge of what they were doing. 

This wasn’t just for fun. This wasn’t just for now. 

They’d agreed to something bigger, to reach for each other and share themselves; dating “first” may’ve been seen as taking it slow in the culture Tony’d grown up in, but dating  _ at all _ was a sacred trust that Steve had never experienced. 

He could not possibly say these things to Tony on a first date.

Time was an unimportant thing with Tony warm and happy above him, so Steve had no idea how much of it had passed by the time Tony next drew back far enough to make eye contact. Minutes, maybe. Lifetimes, possibly. In any case, they’d established limits for what they were getting up to this day, so a tapering-off of passionate contact was inevitable. 

Steve didn’t mind. The underlying implication of  _ more  _ and  _ later  _ made a ball of warm contentment swell behind his breastbone, and he met Tony’s satisfied smirk with a smile of his own. 

“Fun?” Tony asked. His voice was low, a little rough, and it made Steve’s toes curl.

“Very,” Steve assured him. Tony rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek and Steve all but purred. He wrapped his arms more tightly around Tony, cradling the nape of his neck in one palm for a moment before moving into a more straightforward hug. He delighted, secretly, in how far  _ around  _ Tony he could reach, easily wrapping his hands around opposite shoulders. Being bigger than other people had taken a lot of getting used to, but in this context he was enjoying it very much.

Tony, meanwhile, had quite happily carried on in his ministrations, leaving a trail of soft, slightly damp kisses across Steve’s cheekbone, over the bridge of his nose, and down the other side to just behind his jaw. Steve melted under the attention, with no room in his head for anything but the anticipation of where Tony’s mouth would land next.

So much so that when Tony arched up eagerly and made a throaty, lustful noise against Steve’s collarbone, it took him a moment to realize what had earned that reaction. 

“Uh,” Steve squeezed gently with the hand that had gone subconsciously roving while he was otherwise occupied. The one that was seated firmly on Tony’s...seat. “Is that okay?”

“Hey, we’re driving at your speed, tiger,” Tony assured him. He nuzzled up under Steve’s chin, and the resulting brush of beard over his Adam’s apple took his breath away. “You wanna knead the buns, be my guest. Feels nice.”

Steve had time for just one more emboldened, playful squeeze, getting a good firm palmful of Tony’s right cheek, before disaster struck.

Twin, equally-agonized shouts of pain split the air, Steve first and Tony immediately after.

Well. Steve’s was a bit more of a yelp.

He’d been too distracted, in the moment, to see what exactly had happened. In the aftermath, he was able to put together a clear picture of events. 

The faint jingle of a collar drawing nearer. The almost-soundless  _ whumph  _ of a dog leaping off the carpet in his direction. 

The impact of forty pounds of pupper dropping from on high with spear-point precision as two delicate front paws carried all that momentum directly into the space between Steve’s open legs and stapled his balls to the couch cushions below, and the absolutely incredible starburst of pain that shot through his entire body in a single instant.

The unfortunate reflex response of squeezing down on what was already in his hands; not as hard as he possibly could, but a lot harder than advisable when what he’d had in his hands was somebody’s bicep and buttcheek. 

 

“...but he’ll be fine,” Steve promised Bruce at the end of his story. The version he’d told had contained a lot less detail than his own memories of yesterday, and yet, quite a bit  _ more  _ detail than he’d meant to include. Talking to Bruce was like that, sometimes. “Once we were sure it was just a little bruising, he wouldn’t stop teasing me about what everyone would assume when they saw.”

Bruce snorted. “Good thing I heard it from you first. Now he can’t try to sell me any wild stories down in the lab.” Bruce paused, as if caught by a terrible thought. “Actually that’s probably not going to stop him at all. He just won’t bother trying to make them believable.”

Steve chuckled. He appreciated Bruce’s lighthearted take on the incident. They’d been lucky; he could have done real damage. It was encouraging, at least, that even caught completely unawares, some part of his brain had clung to the  _ Don’t break that! _ instinct he’d so painstakingly trained himself into after the serum. So, it was probably safe for him to be romantically involved with a baseline human partner.

Probably.

Steve’s thoughts were cut short by a soft, warm presence slumping against his back.

“Tony?” Steve asked it, somewhat unnecessarily. There weren’t a lot of other possible candidates for the identity of the mysterious sleepy slumper, but that didn’t stop Steve from craning over his shoulder to try to confirm. 

No verbal response was forthcoming, but familiar arms rose to circle his waist. And then carried on rising, until there was a tanned and calloused hand gently cupping each of Steve’s pectorals. 

“Yep, that’s Tony,” Steve answered himself, flatly. 

Bruce choked on another laugh, smacked his spatula down on the counter, and poured a cup of hot black coffee. His motions were deliberate and precise in a way that told Steve there would be no arguing with whatever he said next.

“Take,” Bruce put the coffee in Steve’s hand and took away the pancake flipper he’d been using on the potatoes. “Go. Sit. Be cute. Get him away from hot pans until he knows which way is up.”

That last one, at least, was an argument Steve had no counter for, so he led Tony away to get comfortable and caffeinated. Steve picked out an oversized armchair and wedged Tony into it beside him. He smiled, curling around Tony as Tony curled around the coffee.

He could let someone else make breakfast, just this once. 

 

****

 

There was something profoundly unfair about playing Rock Band against a supersoldier, Tony decided.

Although they weren’t, strictly, competing. The assortments of players shifted with every song, and score wasn’t being kept, but they’d all learned quickly that if Steve so much as got a look at a game of any kind, he’d begin to exude an aura of competitiveness that would gradually infect anyone nearby. You had to be on your guard against it. The main effect that this was having on the current game was that Steve and Thor were only allowed to play cooperatively, because Thor had no natural defences against any invitation to compete, no matter how indirect, and alien-god-v-supersoldier matchups were bad for the PS3 controller budget.

Still, Tony mused with a slight glare, watching Steve’s drumsticks clacking against the plastic kit with serum-powered precision. Deeply unfair.

It was Tuesday night. Late afternoon, really. Not a traditional time for team bonding activities, but they’d all missed each other, having been scattered to the winds for most of the weekend. Tony had slogged back up to the team floor after a long day of meetings--dragging Pepper behind him, in spite of her weak protests, take a  _ break, _ woman--to find the resident members of the team already gathered and milling about aimlessly. All it had taken was one casual comment about dust gathering on the fancy peripherals that Rock Band required, and everyone had leapt on the excuse to stick around.

Getting six Dignified Adults to play digital karaoke with him had been a tougher sell the first time. Clint in particular had been surprisingly against it, for as big a goofball as he turned out to be. But Tony had known that if even Lieutenant Colonel James “No, Tony” Rhodes could enjoy this game enough to post up a guitar score for Bohemian Rhapsody that had stood undefeated for over a year and a half, then a bunch of stressed-out superheroes would probably discover that they, too, were still capable of having fun, if they’d try. 

Right now, Steve was on drums and Thor on guitar, with Bruce looking very put upon but steady at bass. No singers in that group, Bruce having no confidence in his vocals and Steve and Thor not knowing the words to...well, almost anything. Although the pair of them were gamely chanting along with the chorus, as much as they could while in the process of hearing the song for the first time in their lives. Usually they only got the last two or three words. If Clint had been there he probably would’ve been belting out Smash Mouth with surprising accuracy whether he was on mic or not, but he was the last Avenger still out from the weekend. He was due back within the hour, and would probably pout when he saw that they’d started without him. 

Tony managed to tear his eyes away from Steve’s muscular back and appreciate the rest of the room. Penny, a more and more frequent fixture at team gatherings, was slumped on the sofa next to Tony, with her face and shoulder smooshed against the side of his thigh. She seemed mostly disinterested, save for the occasional thump of her tail if Steve got particularly animated, especially if he looked like he might fling a drumstick across the room. 

Pepper and Natasha had settled into the love seat on the left side of the sitting area, both of them delicately sipping something that looked like iced tea, but may or may not have been of the Long Island variety. Too soon to say. Pepper had her bare feet up on the coffee table; Natasha was folded into the corner, tucked neatly in on herself in a tight soft bundle of sweater and yoga pants, starkly contrasted against Pepper’s workday pencil skirt and blouse. 

Tony hid his mouth behind his hand to cover a sudden grin, and turned away. Natasha had probably already noticed him looking, because she noticed  _ everything, _ apparently. He could pretend to keep his amusement to himself, anyway, even if he knew that it wouldn’t work.

Natasha’s secret superpower of knowing everyone’s personal business explained her rude reaction to his confession last Friday, at least. She claimed that she hadn’t meant to laugh; it was just that it was so obvious to her that Steve and Tony were pining after each other, and when Tony had copped to his side of it, she’d been so happy for them. Then, Tony had come flying out of left field with this idea that Steve and Clint were dating. The moment he’d said it she could see how he’d thought it, and the combined shock of having missed the cues that had led him to that assumption, plus the mental image of Clint’s real boyfriend’s face if he’d come home to find he’d been replaced by Captain America…

She’d been too drunk to handle it.

When she’d gotten home Monday, she’d been quick to corner Tony in his workshop to explain, and apologize properly. Tony had allowed it, the insult mostly forgiven already, considering how things had turned out with Steve. He’d gotten his own back in the next hour or so, anyway, by flaunting his bruised arm and conspicuously not sitting down, nor resting his hip against the edges of tables, or even bending over properly. At least, not without a slight but telling wince. 

(If Natasha’s assumptions based on that evidence were a bit dirtier than the truth, then that was her own fault.)

Tony shifted on the sofa, not to take pressure off of his still-sensitive cheek but rather to put some on. The bruises hadn’t been that deep, never shading to worse than blue even at the deepest points--the fingerprints, spread in a heart-stutteringly broad semicircle across the thick muscle of his backside, when Tony had gotten a good look in the mirror that night--and were fading rapidly. A shame, in his opinion.

He hadn’t slept much that first night, largely because of those bruises. They hadn’t hurt, much, just enough to get his attention when he rolled over or stretched his arm out, just enough to say:  _ here, he touched you here, it was real, he likes you, he wants you, he touched you _ . 

Not painful. Just massively distracting.

Distracting enough to turn him into a sleep-deprived zombie with no boundaries the next morning, but that was fine. He’d gotten lots of hugs out of it. Probably would have been good to talk to Steve before outing their brand-new baby relationship to Bruce, but oh well. Napping on Steve’s chest was so far from the worst thing a friend had ever caught him doing, it didn’t even make the list.

Tony was jolted back into the present by a drumstick tapping against the bridge of his glasses. He flinched, going cross-eyed for a moment and then blinking into focus. Steve was grinning cheekily at him from the drum throne. He twirled the stick in his fingers and held it out to Tony butt-end first, in clear challenge.

“Oh, my turn already?” Tony took the sticks with a grin and rolled to his feet. Steve offered the throne with a flourish and Tony took his place. “Get ready to have your sweet ass handed to you, sunshine.”

“We don’t keep score in this house,” Natasha sing-songed. Menacingly.

Tony pointed a drumstick at her. “You just earned yourself bass-duty.”

“I accept my fate,” she intoned solemnly. She held out a hand, imperious, and Bruce dutifully delivered her instrument. 

Tony turned his attention to his CEO.

“No, Tony.”

“I didn’t even ask yet!”

“No. I have a reputation to uphold.” Pepper insisted, re-crossing her ankles and settling her feet more comfortably on the throw pillow she’d placed on the coffee table. “My only superpower is being a responsible adult and if anybody finds out I’m not one, I’ll never work in this town again.”

“Okay, wow, a lot to unpack there,” Tony allowed. He loosened his tie as he went on. “But given that the guy who stood next to you while you screamed  _ Wannabe  _ at the top of your lungs in full Ginger Spice cosplay at the Spice Girls reunion show in LA five years ago currently signs your paychecks, your argument holds no water.”

“Lies.” Pepper declared. She took a long pull of her mystery drink. “You don’t sign shit.”

Still, she placed the glass back on the end table with an emphatic  _ clunk  _ and rose gracefully from her seat, amid cheers (mostly from Steve and Thor) and wolf-whistles (mostly from Tony). 

“What’s your pleasure, milady?” Tony swept an arm toward the peripherals not yet in use. “Guitar? Keys?”

“Microphone.” She stared Tony down with a twinkle in her eye. “And cue up  _ Centerfold.” _

Tony threw his head back and laughed. 

“You know what you did,” Pepper added, gently accusatory.

“Rude!”

“I am not supposed to find out who you’re dating from the paparazzi anymore, Tony, that’s the rule,” Pepper stated primly, wrapping the microphone cord around her hand. “ _ Centerfold, _ please.”

“We’ll play whatever song you want, but I was never your angel and that was not a centerfold,” Tony countered. The tabloid photos had been adorable, honestly, and the naughtiest thing he and Steve had been caught doing on their Saturday outing was smiling at each other. Hadn’t stopped Pepper from giving him The Look on Monday, but it was possible that her standards for what constituted a scandal had been knocked out of whack by his recent streak of good behavior. “My centerfolds are tasteful and intentional and when you see one, you’ll know.”

He turned to wink salaciously at Steve, and found him already bright red. He’d taken Tony’s place on the sofa and was scratching Penny’s ears with an absent sort of look that spoke of a future Google Image search for the words “Tony Stark centerfold”. Tony made a mental note to verbally endorse such a search later, in a more private setting, then turned back to his band of terrifying ladies, and started the song.

Pepper was quite a good singer, in fact, and Tony wasn’t a supersoldier but he had been briefly obsessed with Neil Peart in undergrad and had spent a few good weeks annoying Rhodey by trying to learn YYZ instead of doing literally anything school-related. Natasha held down the bass line with cool stoicism. The greatest challenge to any of them presenting a decent score turned out to be Penny, who apparently heard, in Pepper’s enthusiastic rendition of the classic, the call of the wild. Soft howling overlaid the sounds of clicking controllers and the J. Geils Band as Penny added the song of her people to the mix. Tony wanted  _ desperately  _ to turn around and see what she looked like doing it--not to mention Steve’s face at his daughter’s adorable rudeness, which must be epic--but he had a game to not-technically-win, dammit. He settled for hoping JARVIS was recording her. 

As the song wound down, a minor commotion could be heard from the direction of the elevators. Tony kept his eyes fixed on the screen, waiting for scores. If it was anything other than Clint getting home, JARVIS would have told them. 

A pair of voices, still distant enough to be unintelligible, were having a very quiet and civil but insistent argument. Tony smiled, distractedly. He’d reached out to Clint via text message Sunday morning after breakfast, in between bouts of wiring on the latest boot-jet upgrade.

_ Tony (08:45:26): hey i’ve been talking to steve _ __   
_ Tony (08:45:28): you dont think i hate gay people righte _ _   
_ __ Tony (08:45:31): i don’t hate gay people i am gay people

_ Tony (08:52:15): you should bring your guy here _

_ Tony (09:03:45): i mean to live _

_ Tony (09:22:10): i mean you guys sound pretty serious and the idea of having to wait for a three day weekend and make a four hour drive to see your partner that almost died bums me way out he should move in _ _   
_ _ Tony (09:22:13): bring the dog we already have one. precedent pet policy. _

_ Tony (09:34:24): i mean he doesnt have to if he doesnt want to i just want to be very clear that he’s welcome here _

_ Tony (09:35:17): you should bring the dog either way i also do not hate dogs how do these rumors get started STEVE _

_ Clint (13:12:45): Jesus, Stark. Remote-detonate my phone, why don’t you. I’ll ask him. _

_ Clint (13:15:02): Thanks. _

By the sound of it, Clint had asked, and his partner had agreed that being able to see each other every day was worth any possible drawbacks from living in a building full of high-profile superheroes. 

Tony squinted at the scores. There was a witty and/or seductive comment to be made about his and Steve’s performances here somewhere, and he’d about half worked out what it was when his throne slid a foot backwards, taking him with it. The cause of this sudden relocation was immediately revealed, as Steve’s arms slipped around his waist from behind. Steve leaned into him, with his chin hooked over Tony’s shoulder and his broad chest warm against Tony’s back. 

“Ex- _ cuse _ you,” Tony protested, trying to sound offended at the manhandling. He wasn’t very successful, on account of all the smiling he was doing. And also how his hands automatically landed on top of Steve’s where they rested on his ribs and thigh, their fingers lacing together instantly. 

“What? You were done. This screen’s not important, we don’t keep score in this house,” Steve defended himself. His eyes twinkled, and then they went soft, as he added, “I missed you,” and nuzzled gently against the side of Tony’s neck.

Tony melted at once, all intention of bristling about relative song difficulty evaporating in an instant. “You  _ missed  _ me?” he teased, gently. “I was barely out of arm’s reach!”

Steve nodded solemnly. “For two songs in a row.” He tightened his grip. “Unacceptable.”

There was a general round of grumbling about PDA and bedroom eyes that shouldn’t be allowed in the common area, but Tony barely heard it. It was still such a nice surprise to know that Steve  _ wanted  _ to make bedroom eyes at him...he couldn’t be bothered to care where it happened and who saw.

A wet nose nudged against Tony’s hand and he dutifully set to scratching Penny’s ears with his eyes still closed and his nose tucked into Steve’s hair. He’d been at it for a good half minute before he realized that the fur between his fingers was the wrong length and texture. 

He startled and looked down, game and cuddles forgotten. A single, soulful eye stared back at him, from a soft, golden face.

“Hiiiii buddy,” Tony breathed, bringing his other hand down and offering it for sniffing. “You moving in? You better be or your dad’s the worst, bringing you here to tease me, yes he is, just the worst.”

Steve pulled away and Tony dimly registered him getting up off the couch. Clint’s dog sniffed his hand politely, wagged a bit, and then wandered on to continue meeting all the new people. Tony, watching the retriever-maybe-lab-mix saunter toward Bruce, caught the tail end of the approaching conversation.

“--telling you, everybody knows!” Clint was saying, insistently. 

“...Tony?” Steve’s voice was uncertain and small, from over Tony’s shoulder. It occurred to Tony that actually everyone probably didn’t know he’d invited the whole Barton familyish unit to move in, since Clint was the only one he’d talked to about it.

“Ah, so,” Tony started, watching the new dog paw ineffectually at Bruce’s knee for a moment before giving up and strolling toward Thor instead. “Clint might be bringing his boyfriend and his dog today, surprise, no big, I just--Pepper? What, Pep, are you…crying?”

Pepper shook her head, but didn’t take her eyes--her glistening, Ghibli-like tear-filled eyes--off whatever was behind Tony. She covered her mouth with one hand, dropping the microphone on the floor like she’d forgotten she had it. 

Tony glanced around, stunned, taking stock of the team one at a time. Bruce was still as a statue, eyes wide as saucers. Thor was perched at the edge of his chair, half-hunched over and forehead wrinkled, hand outstretched as if he hadn’t quite decided if he needed to call his hammer. Natasha’s face was lit up like Christmas had come early. Tony turned half around to look at Steve, and this time his man was white as a sheet. 

They were all of them staring toward the elevator. 

“...Okay,” said Clint’s voice, still from behind Tony. He had the distinctly defensive tone of a man losing an argument. “But  _ Tony  _ knows, I swear.”

“Of course I know,” Tony mused out loud, wondering what he was missing. “I invited you--y--”

Tony got himself up and turned to face the entryway and his tongue instantly cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He stumbled sideways into Steve, who caught him out of pure reflex with an arm like a steel band around his waist. 

“Security breach?” Tony whispered.

There was a dead man in his doorway.

A dead man in a sharp, understated suit. A dead man with a small, knowing smile and a receding hairline, with his left arm in a sling.

A dead man who turned to Clint, knowing smile going slightly more smug, and calmly stated: “You owe me twenty bucks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! Huge thanks again to sofreakinmanyfandoms for bidding on me last year, to Wynnesome for Beta, and to Festiveferret for being a genius who solves all of my plot problems and deserves a medal. 
> 
> [Marvel Trumps Hate](https://marveltrumpshate.tumblr.com/) is underway again! Creator signups are open until October 5, and bidding runs from October 19 to October 26th! (I'm going to be offering [crafts](https://atoria420.tumblr.com/post/187911448597/atoria420-photos-of-the-sculptures-im-offering) this year instead of writing.)


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